A Christmas Gift From My Daughter That Never Stops Giving

Some gifts last a lifetime.

This story is in response to The Thriver Challenge from Bebe Nicholson to write a letter to my past self during the hardest time of my life. She asked that we tag a few more people to respond to the challenge, so I’d like to hear from people who’ve inspired me: Leslie Wibberley Ramona Grigg Susan Brearley Tom Chanter and Samuel James White on how they’ve gotten through hard times.

Buddha said if we carried our parents on our backs for the whole of our lives, we could not repay them for the gift of life. That may be. But my daughter has repaid the gift of her life more times than I can count. Most often, when I reached my lowest points.

One of them came on a Christmas twenty-five years ago. Now I’m facing one of my biggest challenges: my 80th birthday with the great unknown coming behind it. A look at how I faced a challenge in my younger life can give me perspective on future transitions.

Flashback two years when I’d celebrated receiving a huge book contract from a New York publisher.

This was in the early ‘90s, before ebooks and online publishing made every author’s dream of a bestseller a possibility.

With the help of a co-author, a faculty member at a prestigious university, we’d snagged an agent who had managed to land an auction for our book and a six-figure advance.

It wasn’t our first book, but this project was bigger.

Much bigger. The whole enterprise was heady, giving us dreams of big-time success. As the writer, it all rested on my shoulders. My partner had done his job, landing the endorsement of the university, that no doubt tempted the publisher.

So I set about doing my job. Writing a book that would deliver on the promises of the kickass proposal I had written.

I quit my full-time job to live on the first installment of the advance and write, carving out two days a week to work at a day job.

All I heard was, “How’s the book coming?”

At work, from family, friends, anyone who knew me. Visions of autograph parties and TV interviews danced in my head. Quitting the day job permanently. Writing more books for even bigger advances. My life had finally turned a corner, I believed. I was a real writer at last.

Until weeks before Christmas two years later. The publisher canceled the book and asked for the advance back.

Cue visions of me leaping off the nearest bridge. Except I couldn’t. I had a daughter. And a book I had to salvage somehow. Lawyers to deal with to fight the publisher. And an advance I had to pay back.

As Christmas loomed, I’d never felt so bleak.

Every fear of failure materialized in front of me as I had to face my well-wishers with the humiliation that there would be no book. No TV appearances. Only lawyers’ fees and depression.

My daughter’s father and I had divorced when she was seven or eight. No breakup is a happy occasion, but we had done our best to give her a united front and ease the trauma of family separation as best we could. She was as close to her father as she was to me, a relationship I encouraged from the get-go.

However, Christmas was always hard for her.

She always felt torn, having to split her celebrations with his family and mine, even though her father and I never had an argument about how to do the holidays. But now she was in her early thirties. She should be over the struggle of early morning Santa at Daddy’s house and then back to my house and blah blah blah, however we divided the celebration each year. But even though she was grown up, childhood sorrows have a way of hanging on.

So I always knew this time of year put a little stake in her heart, despite the brave face she put on it. What can I say? We all did the best we could. I always felt I could let her have it any way she wanted, which was I gave up Christmas mornings. I just wanted her happy. And, really, so did her father. So, we worked it out that we’d do our gift exchange later in the day, or in the evening. Christmas morning became her time with her father.

Except for the year I lost the book.

“Let’s have breakfast at my place,” she said.

“Really? Okay, if that’s what you want.”

I was surprised but delighted. I had no reason to celebrate that year, and I confess I was going through the motions, even though Christmas was always a favorite. Every year I’d offer a feast to friends and relatives. Allison would come by after a day with her father. I loved to cook and decorate; it was my favorite meal of the year. Except for that year.

My daughter always said we were lucky. Luck of the draw. I agreed. In so many ways were as different as day and night. Yet as compatible as spoons in a drawer. From the time she was a toddler, we’ve made each other laugh.

Childhood can be harder on kids than parents I believe, but I recall her childhood as a blessing. Nothing has changed as she’s grown. I’ve always lived for our visits, and I hope she feels the same. But whether or not we were going through a temporary rough patch, one thing has stood out in our relationship and that has been loyalty to one another.

She was furious that the publisher had canceled the book.

So come Christmas morning, I drove up to her apartment. I’d found a rug she wanted for her apartment. She loved her place, and the dhurrie was just the accent she needed. She had her head out the window, her arms on the sill like a woman in old movies of New York tenements gossiping to neighbors across the way. She waved when I pulled up to the curb and clapped her hands when she saw the rug sticking out of my car.

I hauled my gifts up to her place and arranged them under her tree. I barely found room, because she had so many packages that extended far beyond the lowest branches. I assumed they were for her father and his family, whom she’d see later in the day.

She sat me on the couch, and out came the coffee and pastry. And then the first gift. And the next, and the next, and the next. Fancy flowerpots. Bowls to match my kitchen and dishes. I was buried in presents and ribbon.

Almost every gift was for me. We’d always been generous with one another, but this was extreme. She had selected each present carefully, with an eye to making each one special.

At one point, I stopped ripping off the beautiful wrapping and said, “Allison, you’re making me feel like a queen.”

And her answer stopped me in my tracks. It made me realize that no matter what happens in my life, I have one person who is worth more than any book contract, who can heal any disappointment. Someone I’d gladly carry on my back for the rest of my days.

“That’s the point, Mom,” she said. “I knew how hard it was to lose the book. I wanted this to be a Christmas you’d never forget.”

And I never have. Twenty-five years have passed since that morning. The book found another publisher the next year, also because of my daughter, but that’s another story. I still have a few of the gifts she gave me that year, though they are on a shelf that is too high for me to reach since I can’t get up on ladders anymore.

My daughter’s father died recently. She held his hand at the end. I believe her love helped him pass over. He deserved that gift for the good man he was, the wonderful father that always showed up for her. I believe she helped him make his last transition because I know the power of her love.

My daughter is a magician who can turn bowls and flowerpots into lifelines that helped pull me out of my lowest depths.

I haven’t saved the trinkets of that year to remind me of what my daughter means to me. I hardly need a reminder. I keep them because they make me recall a time that was among the lowest of my life, when my daughter’s love, lifted me up and helped me face my life again.