Tangerines in Paper Bags for Christmas
“Without this surgery you might have two years to live.”
I heard those words on November 14th and was shaken to my core. The surgeon looking back from my computer screen had my full attention.
On the one hand, people don’t come with an expiration date. But on the other hand, circumstances often impose such a date, and mine was coming due fast. And let me tell you, a statement like that does something to you on an almost molecular level.
In short…he had my attention.
I found out recently that I’ve had a defective heart valve since birth. I knew I had a heart murmur but it had never been a problem. Well, as it turns out, through little league and high school baseball, martial arts, working out, and every other activity over the last 64 years, I’d been having symptoms. I was just so accustomed to them, that I didn’t notice them.
Until a few months ago.
Then I noticed.
I’m married to a nurse practitioner and about midnight a few weeks before THE conversation, I woke up, nudged her, and said, “Do you have a stethoscope handy?” Boy, that’ll get a nurse’s attention in a heartbeat (almost no pun intended). My heart was beating fast and hard. I could feel it in my backbone. And I was shaking. Scared to death. She promptly hustled me and the dog into her SUV and we headed to the hospital where my cardiologist practices.
Fast forward past lab work, wearing a heart monitor, meeting with a cardiologist who specializes in electrical problems of the heart, and wondering when the next shoe was going to drop, and I was on a video call with the surgeon the “electrician” had recommended.
“Mr. Smith, I have seen your test results, the labs, and the pictures of your heart. You have severe aortic stenosis. That means the valve between the lower left heart chamber and the aorta does not open completely. The area through which blood moves out of the heart to the aorta is narrowed. When the aortic valve opening is narrowed, the heart must work harder to pump enough blood into the aorta and to the rest of the body. Your aortic valve is deformed, probably since birth, and it’s deterioration over the last month is significant. So much so, that without an aortic valve replacement, you might have two years to live. And because of that fact, we have moved your case up to December 12th.”
So, at this time last Monday, I was asleep on the operating table with my chest cut open, my sternum sawed in half, a machine breathing for me, and circulating my blood so my heart could be stopped safely, and a surgeon was busy replacing my defective heart valve with one that works.
And when he made the final suture, my heart started beating again, he wired my sternum back together, and stapled my chest closed, I got my life back. No expiration date anymore. My life will go on as it should until my normal lifespan is over.
A friend texted me and said somewhat facetiously, “…some Christmas present, huh?”
Well, yeah. It’s the best Christmas present I have ever received.
And I will not waste this second chance.
My name is Thomas Smith and this is Whistling Past The Graveyard; an occasional newsletter about what I’m working on, any books/writing projects coming out in the future, and anything else that strikes my fancy. And I’m honored to have you taking this walk with me.
Tangerines in Paper Bags
In the early days of my life, I didn’t know we were poor because everybody else around us was poor too. I was just another happy kid with parents who loved me, friends to play with, and the occasional dog. We didn’t have a lot, but I didn’t really notice. Too many trees to climb, trips to my grandparents’ house, and tadpoles to catch.
And those trips to my grandparents’ house were the best. Especially around this time of year. My brother and I were always glad to see grandmama and grandaddy, but on one particular weekend every December, we would spend it with grandmama and grandaddy, and when our parents came to pick us up on Sunday, instead of leaving after supper, we’d all go to the little clapboard church in the country for the annual Christmas program.
The program was pretty much the same very year. There would be a Christmas Hymn, scripture reading (usually the story of Jesus’ birth from the 2nd chapter of Luke), a pageant complete with exotic kings with bath robes and cotton ball beards, a plastic baby Jesus, and a pint sized Mary and Joseph watching the scene pass before them in all it’s country church splendor.
Then, from the same piano that had just played a moderately passable version of It Came Upon the Midnight Clear, came the THE song: Here Comes Santa Claus. And as if summoned by magic, he came through the front door of the church. Santa himself, carrying a banana box loaded with small paper bags. And inside those bags were the most exotic of treasures. He would bounce down the center aisle of the church, giving his best Ho-Ho-Ho, until arriving at the chair which had been brought out for him in front of the chancel rail. Next, he would sit down, say, “Merry Christmas,” loud enough to be heard out in the parking lot, and then the magic began.
He called all of the children to come up, one at a time, by name. He knew us all. Even two of us who only visited a few Sundays out of the year. He knew all our names and he had something for every one of us.
He had a paper bag filled with treasures.
Every bag contained an apple, some penny candy (Mary Janes, fireballs, bubble gum, B. B. Bats, Nik-L-Nips) and a tangerine. Not an orange. No, nothing so common as an orange. Every bag held a big, juicy, tangerine. The most exotic fruit any kid in that room had ever seen.
Nothing smelled or tasted like a real tangerine. Only Santa would have access to such a wonderful thing. And he brought one for each of us when he came to visit.
Then came the second treat of the night. In every boy’s bag was a cap pistol and a couple of rolls of caps. Every girl’s bag contained a troll doll.
One by one, he called us up (By Name!) and asked if we had been good. We stretched the truth as far as we dared. Then he smiled, reached into the banana box, and brought out a bag for us. Candy, an exotic fruit, and a toy. And for many of us, THAT was the night Christmas really began.
After a reminder for each of us to continue to be good, Santa left, we sang Silent Night, then filed out of the church into a night filled with the sound of cap gun battles and a chorus of ,”He’s not ugly, he’s cute,” as each little girl showed off her wild maned treasure.
It was not until years later that I realized the “interesting” aroma coming off of Santa in waves smelled exactly like the fumes from the 5 cent cigars favored by Mr. Eason. The proprietor of the local country store.
But the aroma I remember the most, the one that transports me back to a simpler time where Christmas included magical bags delivered in church and families riding through downtown to look at the big nativity scene set up in the town square, is the aroma of tangerines.
I had my first tangerine of the season last night. And as I started to peel away the outer layer, I also peeled away the years. My wife commented on how good it smelled. And she was right. It smelled like Christmas.
So, from our house to yours, Merry Christmas.
News
I hope to be back at work on Haunted North Carolina Coast for The History Press’ Haunted America series next week. The anesthesiologist said the anesthesia they used could mess with my concentration and memory for a week or so. And considering it has taken almost three days from to write the newsletter in short sessions between naps, resting, and walking, next week seems like a good idea.
Cemetery Dance will be sending a contract for my novella, Stranger, sometime between now and early next year.
Cemetery Dance has also requested a short story collection from me. I have delivered the collection and look forward to hearing what they think in the near future.
Whatever else you do today, remember this: You Matter.