Kids’ Toys and Fortune Cookies Wield Fear, Not Fun, When Your Child Is Dying
I’ve suddenly begun to react violently to fortune cookies—as if they’re contagious, as if their vague predictions and mindf--kery warrants a hazmat response.
Like on Christmas Day, when the last thing a family facing terminal illness needs is nutritionless, factory-made soothsaying along with their Chinese takeout.
“Get the f--k out of my house!” I (may as well have) yelled as I frantically stuffed a bag of the cookies into an overflowing trash can.
“Hey! Why are you throwing those out?!” my 8-year-old son moaned from over my shoulder.
Caught in the act! I’d wanted to dispose of them before he’d caught sight. Before he’d get the chance to open one up and pull out whatever nonsensical prophecy was stamped inside, ready to plant seeds of chaos in our minds.
“They’re stale! They’ve gone bad!” I pleaded, perhaps a little too fearfully, just barely restraining myself from telling him they’d been poisoned.
I’ve never been a superstitious person. But it turns out humans are little better than pigeons when it comes to helplessness, when there’s nothing to hold onto but the patterns you see and what you want them to mean. So pecking brings you food if you’re a pigeon and prayer brings you hope if you’re human, at least according to behavioral scientists.
Hours earlier, I had to run to the bathroom to vomit after a stocking stuffer meant only to elicit fun and laughter revealed itself instead as a weapon of psychological terror.
In fairness, the Magic 8 Ball probably couldn’t help it. But that did nothing to soften the blow when my son, awaiting a bone marrow transplant that may or may not save him from a terminal illness, asked the novelty toy, “Will I die soon?”
The inky abyss inside parted to answer his query: “Outlook not so good.”
“That thing’s just a toy,” I reminded him. “You can’t take it seriously.”
But maybe the reminder was more for myself. After all, it’s a struggle to remain upright when the future is blank and unknown. And we’re straddling the third rail between two different worlds, one foot in the land of the living—with a tenuous faith that modern medicine can save us—and the other already resigned to tragedy, deterred after too many false positives.
The order for a transplant came only after a slew of neurologists had told us we were in the clear. My son has been diagnosed with a rare genetic disease called adrenoleukodystrophy, a brutal condition that, at its worst, devours the brain of little boys, killing them slowly as they are forced to watch their own bodies shut down. We thought at first that we’d miraculously gotten a pass, that he had dodged that form of the disease—except doctors had overlooked a rash of lesions in his brain stem, failed to notice the imprint of the disease blinking red in that spot there, and there, and there.
So hope now frightens me.
“Enjoy the holidays with your son,” one of his doctors said. And I do, albeit in isolation, at home, where we are camped out and trying to shield him from rising flu and RSV cases that could spell a medical disaster ahead of his transplant.
The agonizing state of waiting and hoping and never knowing has led to this invasion of magical thinking that turns cookies and toys into ominous monsters. To irrational thoughts eating through my brain like kudzu vines. I flinch when someone tells me they’re “praying” for my son, grimace at the mention of “good vibes.” Not because I don’t appreciate the gestures. But what if they jinx everything? What if they backfire? What if the universe takes offense at such cosmic emotional blackmail and retaliates mercilessly? What if the price to pay for fleeting moments of happiness is blinding periods of agony?
“You think too much,” my son suddenly says as he stares at me seated at my desk, dispersing the thickening haze of what-ifs. “Let’s have a pillow fight.”
“What are your New Year’s resolutions?” he wants to know once that fight is over.
I don’t have an answer; I can’t tell him that my only resolution is to not have a nervous breakdown. The new year doesn’t feel like a chance for new opportunities, but an impasse, a massive concrete wall marking either the end of our life or, dare I say it, a new beginning. All I know for certain is that it will be the hardest of my life. It will begin with MRIs and echocardiograms and endless tests to determine if my son’s heart and internal organs can withstand the shock of his transplant. Then several months confined to a hospital room where matters of life and death will be decided invisibly by stem cells and IV lines.
And yet I welcome 2025 as if nothing has changed, with my son drinking Welch’s sparkling grape juice out of a wine glass as he watches the New Year’s Eve ball drop with widened eyes, asking when he can go to a party like that in real life.
“When you get a bit older,” I say, violating my own self-imposed gag order on talking too much about the future.
“When I’m 9?”
“Maybe.”
