By Rachel Nevergall
@rachelnevergall

Like most Christmas memories, this one begins in early December with a tree. But not one with tinsel and ornaments and lights. No, this tree wasn’t bright at all. This tree was dull, cold, lifeless.  

I was nine weeks pregnant at the time. This was my third pregnancy during Christmas, which in theory should be apropos to the season—all that anticipation, preparation, joy, and of course glow. There’s always talk about The Glow. 

In reality, my pregnancies felt nothing like Christmas. If they were a season, they would more closely resemble Lent—a slow, suffering walk through the dark wilderness of contemplation and exhaustion. I accepted this with the awareness that there was always an end date. But this time was different. This time it felt like the beginning of a long winter, like a darkness I might not ever escape. Or worse, not want to. 

That afternoon, I stood at the kitchen sink letting water run over the basin filled with dirty dishes from two previous meals I had yet found strength to clean. The Daniel Tiger intro song carried in from the other room, alerting me that Elliott, my three-year-old, was onto his second show. Or was it the third? I had lost count. A friend’s recent miscarriage lingered on my mind. I should call her, I thought. But I couldn’t find the right words, so I chose to say nothing at all. That’s what I did in those days. I ignored everything—my housework, my parenting, my relationships. But worse than that, I couldn’t even gather the energy to care. I felt dispassionate about anything that once gave me life. I was a ghost. 

Rising steam alerted me that the water was hot enough for washing. I stuck my hands under the flow, turning them around until the heat scalded them, then forcing them to stay longer, hoping pain might awaken my lifeless body. My eyes followed the steam’s trail, the heat fogging the window over the sink. I reached my hands toward the glass, as much to cool my hands as to clear the view outside. 

The dreary winter day through my window felt like a view into my soul. Was anything alive in me anymore? I piled up failures in my mind like the dishes in the sink–unavailable mother, neglectful spouse, distant friend. But then I ignored the problems, let them sit there, rotting, until my husband could come home and take care of it–the home, the children, me. Honestly, I wondered, if I was nothing but a cold body in the way, maybe…

The thought came then, like haunting wind whistling through bare trees.

Maybe it would be better if I wasn’t here.

***

Moving into this house last summer, I imagined years of looking out my kitchen window and watching my family and my garden grow. Then I could see the daylilies surrounding the patio, the hammock where the children swing, the cherry tree and its changing leaves in the fall. There was an evergreen tree, too, in the middle of the view, so near and so tall I could not see the top of the tree. But so much beauty and life stole my attention in the brighter seasons of the past year, I hardly noticed the evergreen then.

Yet, in the gray days of winter, the tree was all I could see.

Maybe it would be better if I wasn’t here. 

I stared out the window at the tree barely alive in the frigid winter, while the words echoed through the dark hallways of my mind. 

Maybe it would be better if I wasn’t here.

More a whisper than a scream, I hardly allowed the words to fully form before I exorcized them from my mind. 

Maybe it would be better if I wasn’t here.

If I wasn’t looking at the tree as the thought arose, I might have allowed myself to forget the memory all together. But like freezing rain settling on delicate branches, the words clung to the tree, frozen. 

***

I thought I knew about winter before arriving in Minnesota. But knowing and experiencing are two different things. In Minnesota, temperatures remain below freezing for months. Snow that piles up in December rarely leaves before March. Locals reassured us that spring would come. Be patient, they said. But staring out across a sea of nothingness—no flowers, no leafy trees, no color at all—I struggled to imagine life could return from such a sterile scene.

What about the pine tree, I wondered? The evergreen has a reputation of unchanging tenacity despite harsh environments. It’s why Christians began using them at Christmas, a sign of everlasting life with God. But this one? I struggled to see its strength. 

In fact, it’s true, an evergreen tree is not as strong in the winter as it is during the summer.  She may look the same, but like all the other trees, she must go dormant in order to survive. She slows down growth to conserve energy. But there is still life inside her. Deep in her trunk she holds water, where she keeps warm from within, tapping into the water’s nutrients while the soil and climate is harsh and weak. 

Dormant means she becomes still. 

But it doesn’t mean she is dead. 

***

It was too early to feel movement inside me that afternoon in the kitchen. The pregnancy apps indicate a nine-week-old fetus was only the size of a prune. I wasn’t expected to feel the first flutters of life for another month. 

But still, a baby was there, deep inside me, a life. 

At that moment, a feeling startled me away from the threatening words in my head. I jerked my hand off the window to place it on my stomach.

The overwhelming sensation wasn’t joy, not strength, not even love. 

It was nausea. 

Summersaults from the tiny prune in my uterus were just enough to throw my body out of balance and cause me to retch. I ran for the bathroom, away from the window, and away from the terrifying, life ending thoughts. Crouching in the bathroom, shaking from both nausea and fear, I took a deep breath and said to myself: I’m OK. And then one more: never think of this again. 

I touched my hand to my stomach again, this time more gently, like a prayer, a thank you. 

There was still life inside me, too.

***

I told no one about my harmful thoughts. Not my husband. Not my parents. Not my friends. Spoken words hold truth, and that was a truth I didn’t want attached to me. Besides, I had escaped. I was safe. I was alive. If I never gave the words a voice then maybe it was like they never happened. 

But the tree remembered. 

As the winter drew on, snow still relentlessly smothering the ground, the evergreen continued to be all I saw out my kitchen window. And when I saw the tree, the memory returned. I felt the pain of the scalding water, heard the sound of Daniel Tiger, saw the lifeless tree through the foggy window. And with this memory, I remembered what it felt like to want to be lifeless, too. 

Sometimes I could cover up the memory. If I walked away, or avoided the window, the thoughts lost their power.

Other days, though, if the sun caught the shimmer of the snow just right, I couldn’t help but turn. I would do anything those days to seek light, even when it was followed by dark memories. 

That’s where I am today, standing at my kitchen sink another afternoon months later, this time in late March. The sun in the sky shines through the needles of the evergreen tree giving it the appearance of Christmas lights dangling from its branches. The glow beckons me to gaze out the window. Winter is almost over, and with it the foggy haze of pregnancy eases just a bit, too. Maybe that’s why even as I notice the tree and the memory that clings to it, my mind feels safe to wander into thoughts I previously shut out.  

I know I was strong enough that day last December to not let the whisper manifest into a scream. But still I have my doubts. Would I always be that strong? What if the thoughts returned? What if the darkness worsens? I know that depression doesn’t just end when the pregnancy does. I know there are dark days with babies, too. If depression worsened with each pregnancy, what happens when there are three children needing me? What if there are no more nutrients from which to pull? What then?

“Mom, come quick!” Elliott’s shout pulls me away from the window and my spiraling questions. Already in a state of alarm from my own darkness, terror surges through me at his call. I race to the other room to save him. 

I find him in our family room, his eyes focused out the long wall of windows. I follow his gaze to the tree, the same tree I had been looking at seconds before. But he isn’t terrified. He is smiling. 

“Look mom! A bird!” His little fingers point me to the low branches, an angle of the tree I couldn’t see from the kitchen window. Scarlett wings stand out against the white boughs decked in crusted snow. 

“What is it, Mommy?”

“It’s a cardinal,” I say, a note of surprise catching in my voice. “I didn’t know cardinals could survive the winter,” I mumble out loud. I probably should know more about birds in the winter. But there is much I am still learning this season. 

I kneel down next to Elliott, drawing myself close so I can see the tree at his level, an angle that looks entirely different than the one I thought I knew. We watch the cardinal bouncing from branch to branch. His wings carry a hopeful energy, like he knows what is coming. Before long, the bird disappears deep into the evergreen’s thick branches to the nest he made within.

Elliott curls into my lap, fitting just right against my now five month protruding belly, full of life, where his brother gives a little kick only I can feel.

Guest essay written by Rachel Nevergall. Rachel shares her home in Minnesota with her husband and three children. She is the curator of family adventures, lover of all of the library books, mixer of fancy cocktails, and writer in the in-between. Share shares her words in various publications as well as her monthly Raise & Shine Letter, on her blog, and Instagram.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.