Life as We Knew It

  Finally it got too cold even for the most dedicated among us. We finished with "Silent Night." Mom cried and she wasn't alone.

  We hugged each other and said we should see more of each other, but I doubt that we will. We don't want anyone else to know how much food we have or firewood. And they don't want us to know, either.

  Still it was a wonderful Christmas Eve. And tomorrow is going to be even better.

  December 25

  Absolutely the best Christmas ever.

  We woke up in great moods and we talked all morning about how much fun it had been to go caroling the night before. We don't even like the Mortensens, but seeing them last night, knowing they were still around and healthy, was so incredibly reassuring.

  "We made a joyful noise," Mom said. "It's good to remember what joy feels like."

  And lunch. What a feast. First we had beef broth with oyster crackers. Our main course was linguini with red clam sauce and string beans on the side. Mom even pulled out the bottle of wine Peter had brought ages ago, so we had wine with our dinner.

  For dessert, Mom served the lime Jell-O I'd gotten at the free-food handout last summer. I don't know when she made it, but somehow she'd slipped it past us, and it was an incredible surprise.

  So much food. So much laughing. It was great.

  Then we all kind of hemmed and hawed and harrumphed and excused ourselves. I went up to my bedroom to get everybody's presents, and much to my surprise, Mom and Matt and Jon also went upstairs to their rooms.

  When we met back in the sunroom, we were all carrying presents. Only Mom's were wrapped with real gift wrap. I'd used magazine pages for my presents and Matt and Jon used grocery bag brown paper.

  But we were all surprised. So many presents.

  It turned out there were two presents for each of us and one for Horton.

  Horton opened his first. It was a brand-new catnip mouse.

  "I got it at the pet supply store," Jon said. "I didn't tell anybody because I figured I was just supposed to be buying food and litter. And then I figured at least Horton should get a present for Christmas so I held on to it."

  It was actually a present for all of us. Horton immediately fell in love with the mouse and licked it and jumped on it and acted like a kitten. I thought about how scared I'd been when he'd run away. But he knew what family was, too, and he came back and we were all together, the way we were meant to be.

  Mom told us to open our presents from her next. "They're nothing special," she said. "Peter got them for me from the hospital gift shop before it closed."

  "That makes them more special," I said and I meant it. "I wish Peter could be here with us."

  Mom nodded. "Well, open them already," she said. "Just don't count on their being anything fancy."

  My fingers trembled when I carefully removed the gift wrap. It was a brand-new diary, a really pretty one with a pink cover and a tiny little lock and key.

  "Oh, Mom," I said. "I've never seen anything so beautiful."

  Jon's present was a handheld battery-run baseball game.

  "Don't worry," Mom said. "Batteries are included."

  Jon's grin was so bright he could have lit up the whole room. "This is great, Mom," he said. "Something for me to do."

  Matt's present was a shaving kit. "I figured you were due some new razor blades," Mom said.

  "Thanks, Mom," Matt said. "I've been feeling a little scraggly."

  I insisted Mom open my present next. She unwrapped it, and when she saw it was a box of actual chocolates, her jaw dropped.

  "They're probably a little stale," I said.

  "Who cares!" Mom cried. "They're chocolates. Oh, Miranda! Of course we'll share. I can't eat the whole box by myself." She stopped and covered her mouth with her hand. "Oh, I didn't mean that the way it came out!"

  I burst out laughing. Jon kept asking what the joke was but that only made me (and Mom) laugh louder.

  So I told Jonny to open his present from me next. He ripped into the paper and then flung the top off the shoe box. "I don't believe this!" he shouted. "Matt, look at these cards. Look at them. There are hundreds. And they're old. They're from the '50s and '60s. Look, Mickey Mantle. And Yogi. And Willie Mays. I've never seen a collection like this before."

  "I'm glad you like them," I said, relieved he didn't ask where they came from. "Matt, you go next."

  Matt opened my present to him. "What?" he said at first. "I mean, this is really nice, Miranda, but I don't think I understand."

  "Oh," I said. "I know the pictures are all colored. But the pencils were in great shape and I thought you could draw on the back of the pictures. You used to draw really well and I thought maybe you'd like to do it again."

  His face lit up. "That's a great idea," he said. "You keep your journal and I'll draw pictures of all of us. Thanks, Miranda. I'm going to love these pencils."

  If I'd known he was going to draw us, I'd have looked for gray pencils. But he seemed excited and that made me happy.

  "Open our present next," Jonny said so I cheerfully did.

  It was a watch.

  "How did you know I needed one?" I asked.

  "You keep asking what the time is," Matt said. "It wasn't too hard to guess."

  I almost asked where the watch came from, but then I really looked at it and saw it had been Mrs. Nesbitt's. It was an old-fashioned watch, the kind you have to wind every day. Her husband had given it to her and I knew how much she cherished it.

  "Thank you," I said. "It's a beautiful gift. I love it. And now I'll stop pestering you."

  "I guess this present is the last one," Mom said. "But honestly this whole day has been such a gift. I don't need any more presents."

  "Open it," Matt said, and we all laughed.

  "All right," Mom said. She took off the grocery bag paper and fell silent. "Oh, Matt," she said. "Jonny. Wherever did you find this?"

  "What is it?" I asked.

  Mom showed me what she was holding. It was an old black-and-white photograph of a young couple holding a baby. It was even in a frame.

  "Are those your parents?" I asked.

  Mom nodded and I could tell it was all she could do to keep from crying.

  "And that's Mom in the picture," Jon said. "She's the baby."

  "Oh, Mom, let me see," I said, and she handed it over to me. "It's beautiful."

  "Where did you find it?" Mom asked.

  "In a box at Mrs. Nesbitt's," Matt said. "I saw it was old photographs and I brought it back here. She labeled all the pictures on the back. It was Jon's idea to go back and find a picture frame it would fit in. I didn't remember ever seeing the picture before, so I thought maybe you didn't have it."

  "I didn't," Mom said, taking it back from me. "It's summertime and we're on the back porch. How funny. We're in the exact same place, only now it's been enclosed. I must be about six months old. I guess we were visiting my grandparents. Mr. Nesbitt probably took the picture. I think I can make out his shadow."

  "Do you like it?" Jon asked. "It isn't like it cost anything."

  "I love it," Mom said. "I have so few memories of my parents and so little to remember them by. This picture—well, it takes me back to a different time. I will cherish it always. Thank you."

  "I think I'll start sketching," Matt said. "I'll do some preliminary sketches before using my pencils." He grabbed some of the paper bag, pulled out the black pencil, and began drawing.

  Then Mom did something that made me even happier. She opened up her box of chocolate and read the diagram very carefully. Then she took the top off the box and placed 12 of the chocolates in it and passed it over to us. "You can all share this," she said. "The rest is mine."

  I loved that I was going to get to eat some chocolate but that Mom respected the fact it was my gift to her and not to all of us.

  The Christmas after Mom and Dad split up, they both went crazy buying us presents. Matt, Jonny, and I were showered with gifts at home and at Dad's apartment. I thought that was great. I
was all in favor of my love being paid for with presents.

  This year all I got was a diary and a secondhand watch.

  Okay, I know this is corny, but this really is what Christmas is all about.

  December 27

  No Christmas vacation for us. I'm back at history, Jon at algebra, Matt at philosophy, and Mom at French. We share what we learn, so I'm getting a refresher course in algebra and keeping up with my extremely minimal French skills. And we get into some really heated discussions about philosophy and history.

  Also Mom decided that while Texas Hold 'Em has its good points, it isn't enough. She dragged out our Scrabble and chess sets, and now we play them, too. We play Scrabble together (so far Mom's on a winning streak), and anytime two of us are in the mood, we play chess.

  Mom got it in her head that even though none of us can sing, we should do a Sound of Music thing and sing together. If Julie Andrews ever heard us, she'd probably jump into the first available volcano. But we don't care. We bellow show tunes and Beatles songs and Christmas carols at the top of our lungs and call it harmony.

  Mom's threatening to make us darling little matching outfits out of the drapes.

  Winning all those Scrabble games is definitely going to her head.

  December 31

  Tomorrow I'm going to start using my new diary. It has a three-year calendar in it, so I'll know what the date is. For some reason that makes me very happy.

  Matt has been sketching every chance he gets. He even goes outside and sketches our desolate winter landscape.

  When he was outside this afternoon, I decided the time had come to decorate the sunroom. Jon and I put nails in the plywood windows and hung up the paintings that Mrs. Nesbitt had left to him and Matt.

  Then I asked Mom where Matt's sketch of me skating was. It took her a while even to remember it and then a while longer to figure out where it must be (back of the shelf in her closet). I put on my coat and gloves and went upstairs and found it. I also took a photograph of us kids, one of those Sears studio things that Mom had hanging in her bedroom, and brought it down as well.

  The sunroom always used to be my favorite room in the house, even more than my bedroom. But lately with the plywood, and four mattresses on the floor, and a clothesline that almost always has wet clothes hanging from it, and the smell of cooked canned food, and most of the furniture pushed out into the kitchen, and everything else in the room shoved to one side or another—well, it's not going to win any decorating awards.

  When Matt came in and saw we'd hung all the pictures up, he burst out laughing. Then he saw the picture he'd drawn and looked it over carefully.

  "That's really bad," he said.

  "It is not!" Mom and I both said, and cracked up.

  We outvoted him so it's staying up. Now I look at it and I don't see some idealized version of me. I see a skater, any skater, at a moment of perfect beauty.

  I see the past the way I like to think it was.

  "I wonder if they're dropping the ball at Times Square tonight," Jon said. "It's already New Year's in a lot of places on earth."

  I wondered, and I think we all did, if this would be our last New Year's.

  Do people ever realize how precious life is? I know I never did before. There was always time. There was always a future.

  Maybe because I don't know anymore if there is a future, I'm grateful for the good things that have happened to me this year.

  I never knew I could love as deeply as I do. I never knew I could be so willing to sacrifice things for other people. I never knew how wonderful a taste of pineapple juice could be, or the warmth of a woodstove, or the sound of Horton purring, or the feel of clean clothes against freshly scrubbed skin.

  It wouldn't be New Year's without a resolution. I've resolved to take a moment every day for the rest of my life to appreciate what I have.

  Happy New Year, world!

  January 1

  Matt informed us that he had made a New Year's resolution.

  "You know something," Mom said. "This is the first year I didn't. I'm always resolving to lose weight and spend more time with you kids, and this year I actually lived up to those resolutions. I am now officially retired."

  "That's fine, Mom," Matt said. "But I've resolved to master cross-country skiing. Jon and Miranda should learn with me. We can take turns with the skis. It'll get us outside and give us some exercise. How about it?"

  Standing around in below-zero weather with the wind howling and falling into snowbanks didn't sound like all that much fun. But Matt gave me one of those looks and I realized this wasn't about fun and games. It was about being able to escape from here if one of us needed to.

  "Great idea," I said. "And while we're talking great ideas, I have one of my own."

  "Yes?" Matt drawled, skepticism practically oozing out of him.

  "I think I should do Mom's and my laundry, and you and Jon should do your own," I said.

  "No!" Jonny yelped. I guess he has some idea of what hard work doing the laundry is. "Mom?" he whined.

  "It makes sense to me," Mom said.

  "Then Miranda should do the dishes," Jon said.

  "Okay," I said. "If we take turns with the dishes. I'm not going to do them all the time."

  "Fair's fair," Matt said. "We rotate the dishes, and Jon and I do our own laundry. At least until we can start chopping wood again. Now let's go skiing."

  I put on four extra pairs of socks so Dad's boots would stay on my feet and out we went. We ski about as well as we sing, and I spent entirely too much time in snowdrifts on the road. But it got Jon out of his whiny mood, and by the time we finished we could all manage a little.

  "We'll do some more tomorrow," Matt said. "It's good for us and it's good for Mom to have some quiet time."

  "Do you think I could ski to the pond?" I asked. "I'd love to do some more skating."

  "I don't see why not," Matt said.

  It felt great to expand my world again. The idea of not being stuck in the sunroom cheered me up almost as much as seeing the sun would have.

  New Year. New hopes.

  That's the way it should be.

  January 3

  We're definitely getting better with the skiing. Since it's one pair for the three of us, we don't travel great distances. Mostly we ski back and forth, but each time we increase our distance if only by a few feet.

  I can't wait until I'm good enough at it to go back to the pond. I know Matt has us working at it in case there's an emergency and we need to get help, but I've set my goal as getting to the pond for some skating.

  Even Jon's gotten into it. Matt pointed out to him that cross-country skiing is good aerobic exercise and he should think of it as wind sprints, which he'll need to do when the baseball season starts.

  In a funny way the same thing is true for Matt. He was a miler back in college, and the skiing is helping him stay in shape. I'm not sure the air quality is so great for us, but at least our hearts are getting a workout.

  We ski after lunch. It would be too hard in the morning on empty stomachs. There's a part of me that wonders if it's a good idea for us to be burning off calories, but I guess if I starve to death at least I'll have good muscle tone.

  And it gets us out of the sunroom.

  January 5

  Something very weird happened this afternoon.

  We'd done our skiing and were sitting around the sunroom doing schoolwork when we heard someone knocking at the front door. Smoke comes out of our chimney all the time so there's obviously people living here. But no one ever comes by.

  "Maybe it's Peter," Mom said.

  Matt helped her up off her mattress. We all went to the front door to see who it was.

  Jon recognized him first. "It's Mr. Mortensen," he said.

  "I need help," Mr. Mortensen said. He looked so desperate, it was frightening. "My wife. She's sick. I don't know what it is. Do you have anything, any medicine? Please. Anything."

  "No, we don't," Mom said. r />
  Mr. Mortensen grabbed her hand. "Please," he said. "I'm begging you. I'm not asking for food or wood. Just medicine. You must have something. Please. She's burning with fever. I don't know what to do."

  "Jonny, get the aspirin," Mom said. "That's all we have. I'm sorry. We'll give you some aspirin. That should lower her fever."

  "Thank you," he said.

  "How long has she been sick?" Mom asked.

  "Just since this morning," he said. "Last night she was fine. But she's delirious. I don't like leaving her alone, but I don't know what else to do."

  Jon came back and handed over some aspirin to Mr. Mortensen. I thought he was going to cry, and I felt relieved when he left. We went back into the sunroom.

  "Mom," Jon said. "Is Mrs. Mortensen going to be all right?"

  "I hope so," Mom said. "Remember, Peter told us there'd be illness. But she could just have a cold. None of us is at full strength. It could be one of those twenty-four-hour things."

  "Maybe he just wanted some aspirin for a headache," Matt said. "Mrs. Mortensen could be out right now building a snow fort and he just used her as an excuse."

  Mom smiled. "That's probably wishful thinking," she said. "But I'm sure she'll be all right. Now it seems to me we're all behind on our schoolwork. Miranda, tell me what you've been learning in history."

  So I did. And as the day went along I thought less and less about Mrs. Mortensen.

  But now she's all I can think about.

  January 6

  I know this is silly but when we woke up this morning I was relieved that we were still alive and well.

  When Matt suggested we do our daily skiing, I leaped up. I skied farther than I have before. I made it practically to the Mortensen house, but when I realized where I was, I turned around and set a record for how fast I made it back to Matt and Jon.