A mother reminisces about a gift from long ago, and a child now grown.

On Christmas Day five years ago, we were all seated in our family room. There were seven of us – myself, my parents, my husband, my father-in-law and my then thirteen and sixteen-year old sons. All opened the gifts painstakingly chosen for people who mostly did not need anything and had no desire to acquire new objects. I was one of them. I especially don’t like acquiring objects so I suppose I am especially difficult to buy for. Before he learned to stop buying me gifts without my input, I made my poor husband return countless pieces of jewelry that didn’t suit me. I have even taken to handing prospective gift-givers a catalog with items circled so they won’t make any “buying mistakes.” I suppose I am a practical person, not a romantic.

On that Christmas Day, I opened a small package amateurishly wrapped by my normally outlandish, innovative sixteen year-old son, Wilt. This is a child whose first word was “squirrel”, who learned to run before he could walk, who never used any toy for its intended purpose, always finding a new and different use for it, and who, as a natural-born climber, spent much of his toddler years perched atop our refrigerator. To my astonishment, inside the package was a tasteful silver bracelet with tiny blue sapphires and even tinier diamonds all the way around it. Contrary to his usual more quirky nature, Wilt seemed to have come up with a really traditional present. This gift was perfect! I had recently announced that I was starting to dislike gold jewelry and was thinking of switching to silver. This was my first piece!

But wait! My Christmas gift was from a teenager working only a few hours a week at a minimum-wage job. So it could not be real – indeed, the stones were glass and the metal was….well, at least it wasn’t plastic! Oh, but it looked so good! I proudly thanked him and then, ever the practical mom, somewhat rudely demanded to know how much he paid for it. Even though it was a costume piece, it was too much for a teen to spend. But, it turned out he had gone to the trouble of bringing a girlfriend to the mall to help select the item and had spent more on my present than on everyone else’s combined. So – bucking my usual tradition of making people return gifts, I kept it; figuring I would wear it about a year until it fell apart.

Four years later, someone who’s known to be a connoisseur of fine things came into my office and chose to review my silver bracelets which now numbered three. I cringed. The gift from my son was still on my wrist. No, it hadn’t fallen apart; hadn’t broken. But….yes, some of the stones had cracked, some had fallen out. All the silver coloring had worn off and it was down to the base metal. From a distance, the piece looked good. At close range, it was another story.

I explained the bracelet’s history to my critic. Was it an excuse for wearing something so worn out, or was I bragging that I have a son who was so thoughtful that year?

That was not the first time I have had to cringe and explain my wearing of this bracelet. Yet, never once has the thought crossed my mind to stop wearing it. Over the years, I have considered trying to get the metal on the bracelet recoated. I don’t even know if this is possible. I have considered having it replicated in real jewelry but, as I am now paying to send both that gift-giver and his brother to college, spending that sort of money on me is out of the question. Plus, it wouldn’t be the same.

Thinking back to that Christmas day in 2001, I remember feeling something new about my son once I opened that gift. All parents must cross this bridge sometime with each child. Until that gift arrived, he was a child; my child, someone it was my duty and my privilege to nurture and protect. It seems this item signaled for me the first time I could see my son as a mature person with something to give to me rather than simply a receiver of the nurturing I had for him. I think this gift, this bracelet somehow opened the door for me to the man I hoped Wilt would eventually become – someone self-sufficient, someone perhaps stronger than I, someone with good judgment. In a way, I am afraid this bracelet
represented then for me a connection between the nearly grown-up person Wilt is now and the wrenchingly dear child he once was.

However, about a year and a half after I received this bracelet, my chances of ever knowing that grown-up man were threatened. Much like the bracelet which looked so good from a distance, Wilt had a problem inside that his normal physical appearance hid. For several months, we had been sending Wilt alone to get checked for a cough he couldn’t shake. Each time he came back from his medical appointment with the same report: “a chronic non-productive cough.” One day, because it seemed the cough was worse and because it was his first visit at a new facility, something pushed me to go with him to his very early morning appointment. This visit would turn out very different from the others. Some grace caused me to accompany my son right into the exam room that day. There I felt the room spin as I heard the words, “your son is not well.” Soon an ambulance had arrived and we were escorted right to the Walter Reed Emergency Room. Here I heard some techs whisper “he’s taching!” as they eased my kid’s gurney into a very tiny room.

It took the large part of that day to figure out, but they finally found out that there was a long-standing tumor in Wilt’s chest that had grown to the size of a soccer ball. It was crushing his heart and trachea. Emergency surgery was planned for the very next day. My husband was overseas and with no time for second-guessing, I was forced to put my trust in these unknown surgeons who had been called in on the spot and seemed to be figuring out how they were going to do this major surgery as they went along.

As the doctors laid out the risks and options in a cramped and darkened ICU room and demanded a signature from this shaking, ashen-faced mother, my formerly carefree child took my hand and said calmly: “Mom, I am going to be okay.”

The surgery took many hours. It was overwhelming in scope and somewhat experimental in design. Physicians had to consult several sources before deciding their approach. A radiologist neighbor called it the case of the decade for this type of tumor. The pathology report stated a type of malignancy completely unheard of with respect to its location, the size it had reached, and the age of the patient.

The recovery was long and painful. It would be many weeks before my son could even sit up in bed without help and many more before he could forego the painkillers. Months went by before we could begin to see only the faintest glimmer that one day our lives would ever return to any type of normality.

Returning to my bracelet, I feel it is more than a connection to an earlier version of my child. It is a link to a simpler time, a time before the security of our world was rocked by the complexities of radiation decisions, perpetual CT scans, and the knowledge that no one is invulnerable. There are no certainties in this world. If I could have possibly lost my son, no other loss could compare. While most of that danger and horror we experienced three years ago has passed, and Wilt is now, a nearly carefree college student, I feel this bracelet is a talisman that I must hold onto. By my continuing to wear it, will it keep him safe? Lurking just below the level of my consciousness, lies a notion I barely have the nerve to utter: if I ever did lose Wilt, I would always have the bracelet.

The arrival of the bracelet one Christmas day signaled for me a transition from the status of mother of a child needing protection, to a stage where my son morphed into an adult. Our experiences with Wilt’s sudden health crisis signaled a new stage; one where I learned that there are many areas in which I cannot possibly protect him and over which I have no control – whether it be his health, his personal choices, or his final destiny.

As I have no say in how fast my bracelet will wear out, what people will think of my choice to wear something so faded, or when it will fall apart, so I no longer have much choice regarding most issues in my son’s life.

Perhaps in all of this there lies a far greater gift – one it has taken me some time to comprehend: in the face of life’s great uncertainties, the only thing I do have control over is with what amount of grace I accept the things I cannot change. For now, I am keeping the bracelet on and hoping for the best.