A Christmas story

News that Greenwich's Christmas tree recycling program has begun sparked a memory from some years back.

On Thanksgiving Day, 2011, while I was preparing the holiday feast in my mother's kitchen, I heard a crash from her office. I rushed in and discovered that she'd suffered a massive stroke. This vibrant, wonderful, 88-year-old woman who was even then getting straight As at Norwalk Community College, never regained her ability to speak, and barely recognized her children. So it was a bad Thanksgiving, and Christmas a month later wasn't going to be much better.

My mother was beloved by her grandchildren and one of them, my niece Naomi, came east from California to see her, arriving the morning of Christmas Eve with her little boy Asher. Asher's father, a former Marine (sniper, then JPL engineer), had drowned before Asher was born, so he was being raised by his widowed mother. Naomi is a fantastic mother, but there's a undercurrent of sadness in the story of a young widow, a young boy, and no father. Couple that with "Mun-Mun"  in the hospital, and things weren't awfully cheery in the Fountain home.

So that's the set up; here's the point: We hadn't bothered decorating my mother's house — why bother? — and Asher was distraught when he arrived to find that there was no Christmas tree. "Distraught" is perhaps too mild a term — he was devastated. It was then about 3:30, Christmas Eve, and the chances of finding a tree vendor in Greenwich still open struck me as nil, but I loaded Asher in the car and, warning him of our unlikely prospects, we set out to find a tree. 

Sure enough, nothing. The Jerombeck Brothers' stand across from St. Catherine's had shut down for the season and so, too, had every other spot we tried on the Post Road. It was getting dark by now, but I had a sudden thought, which I passed on to Asher: the town had a a space at Tod's Point for residents to drop off their trees for recycling after Christmas. Maybe, I suggested, some family had celebrated early before heading off to the Caribbean, or a ski vacation, and left a tree behind before they left. The odds were very much against us, I cautioned, maybe 100-0, but why not try? 

It was almost dark by this time, and we arrived at Tod's just a few minutes before it closed. We drove to the collection point and discovered only one, solitary tree, but it was perfectly shaped, in prime condition, and exactly the right height to fit my mother's low-ceilinged living room. I mumbled something to Asher about there being a God after all, we loaded up the tree and returned to his great-grandmother's house. His uncles and cousins showed up, a fire was lit, the ornaments retrieved from the attic, and a great Christmas Eve was achieved after all.

So that's my Christmas story. I hope all of you have similar memories to draw on in times of sadness and, for that matter, joy. And, if a reader out there remembers dropping off a tree in 2011 at the Point the day before Christmas, know that you did, even unknowingly, a mitzvah, and you might want to consider whether we're not all part of some higher plan.

I know I do.

Global warming? Bring it on.

A good part of the family has gathered in Maine. Brother Gideon, Susie and Labrador Perkins defied the storm warnings and drove up from Greenwich today, and Gid reports his smoothest, fastest trip in years. The highways were empty ("it felt like the 60s", says he), and the fast moving storm kept ahead of them the whole way.

The girls are here, as is Pal Nancy, so all in all, a wonderful day. But outside activities are going to be limited this week, or conducted in thick down jackets. No trip to the ocean for a quick dip is planned.

And just to be sure we don't leave out our Jewish friends on this wonderful day

The Motion Picture Association of America surely joins the Chinese in this note of grattitude

Feel good Christmas story: Fireman who (barely) survived 9/11 donates kidney to stranger

Kevin Shea, FDNY

A remarkable man.

The third-generation firefighter was just outside the South Tower when it collapsed. He was blown out toward the street, and crawled 200 feet through the blackness until he saw a “bright light.” It was a burning Con Ed gas pipe. Then he “surrendered to the conditions.”

He was found, unconscious, lying amid the twisted steel and crushed concrete near Albany and West streets. He was dragged out only minutes before the North Tower fell.

Shea was off-duty. He had finished a 24-hour tour with Ladder 35 at 7:30 a.m. and could have gone home. But he lingered at his Amsterdam Avenue firehouse, and was packing his gear when the fateful alarm sounded.

“There was an extra seat on the engine,” he recalled.

“I’ll take that, sir,” Shea told his lieutenant.

It wasn’t until the next day, while lying in a Newark hospital bed, that he would learn he was the only one of 13 members of his Upper West Side firehouse to make it out alive.

“I survived through luck — and they did not,” Shea told The Post of the Ladder 35/Engine 40 brothers he still mourns.

This holiday season, the 50-year-old hero celebrated his amazing fortune by giving the gift of life to a stranger — a 59-year-old special-ed teacher from Orange County, Calif., in desperate need of a kidney.

And as if lifted from a Hollywood script, the recipient grew up in New York City, idolizing firemen.

“It’s absolutely a miracle!” a joyous Lois Knudson told The Post. “I will never need another Christmas gift.”

She said she “got chills” when she was told that her life-saving donor was a fellow New Yorker and unlikely survivor of 9/11.

“I don’t think firefighters get the recognition that they’re due. 9/11 was so devastating and so huge. But they are always risking their lives. You don’t hear about what they do on a regular basis.

“He saves lives all the time, that’s what he does,” she said of Shea. “And [now] he saved another New Yorker from across the country.”

Knudson has a degenerative and always fatal kidney disease that runs in her family. Her sister died from it, and her mom succumbed to it at 42 — when Knudson was only 5.

Afraid to pass on the deadly gene, she and her husband Tom decided not to have children. Instead, the couple channeled their love of kids into teaching special-education students for 37 years. Knudson has won five Teacher of the Year awards.

She had been on a waiting list for an organ for four years and on dialysis — “hooked to the machine three days a week for three hours at a time after teaching a full day” — for 15 months when she got the phone call that would change her life on Nov. 21. It was “two days before Thanksgiving.”

The UCLA organ-donation coordinator said, “We found a match for you! A man in his 40s from the Northeast.” Her husband of 30 years “broke down in tears of joy.”

He was interested in signing up for a program that allows living people to donate organs to anonymous individuals. The practice is rare, with only 1 to 2 percent of all living donations — which are far more successful than organs coming from a deceased person — destined for a stranger.

Knudson was eligible for the Shea donation because her niece, Jessica Ellis, was also donating her kidney to a stranger as part of a national “chain” of altruistic donations.

Shea was approved as a potential donor, and by the end of July had an appointment at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center for a battery of medical screenings and even a psychological survey.

The humble, 5-foot-8, 160-pound Shea struggled to explain his altruism to The Post.

“I really don’t know what drives me. I wish I had some great explanation. But the way I look at it, I have an extra kidney and there’s someone out there who definitely needs one,” he said.

Knudson certainly needed one, and finally, she had hope that a match had been found.

“I always knew I would get a kidney,” she said. “But this is a miracle that it’s him. I feel like I got the right person.”

Dr. Sandip Kapur, chief of kidney transplant surgery at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, called Shea a “true hero.”

At 5 a.m. the next day, Dr. Joseph Del Pizzo made a three-inch incision through the belly button to begin the two-hour procedure. At 6:30, the kidney was removed, packaged in a medical cooler, driven to Kennedy Airport, and put on a commercial American Airlines flight to LAX. It was delivered to UCLA Medical Center at 3:30 p.m. West Coast time, where Dr. Jeffrey Veale was standing by.

Thirteen hours after it was harvested, Knudson had a new kidney.

Some man.

 

So this is Christmas — hallelujah!

The fountains prepare to move indoors

Snowing like stink here in Maine. Fire going, girls are home, and Kate has snowshoes wrapped and under the tree (shhh!) It's all good.

Merry Christmas to all the FWIW community, and bless us all

Birgit Nilsson  

It's (almost) time to start shopping!

I once explained to my son John when, three days before Christmas, he asked me to take him shopping, that real men only began that task on Christmas Eve itself, preferably around 8:00 pm. We went out anyway — he insisted, and it's fruitless to argue with a 10-year-old — but I stand by that opinion. For those of a similar mind, here's a great collection of gift suggestions compiled by The Daily Mail, any or all of which may prove useful to my fellow he-men out there.

OF COURSE, AFTER ALL THAT EFFORT, YOU DESERVE A BIT OF A REWARD FOR YOURSELF

Together again

no, this sorry bunch of sad sacks from an Alternative Universe will not be visiting portland, but it'd be fun if they did

Sarah arrived from Colorado around midnight, and was met at the airport by Pal Nancy and, surprise! Her sister Kat, who we slipped in from Oregon without telling Sarah. Good time.

Turns out that the cause of the delay in Denver was that the plane had been overloaded with an extra 20,000 pounds of jet fuel. Checking Google, that amount should power a jet for approximately four hours: the flight from Denver to Newark is 3;40 hours, so some cretin put in twice the amount of fuel as was needed? Sheesh. 

Probably moonlights as a TSA gate guard.

Here in Maine, a blizzard is predicted for Christmas, then plunging down to negative 13 degrees by Wednesday morning. The Fountains will either be ice fishing, or staying by the fire this week.

(Brother gideon has invited a different crowd — we should merge parties!)

Better than had they put in too little fuel, of course, but ... really?

Clown shiow

Daughter Sarah, trying to get home for Christmas, just texted me that she's stuck on the runway because the idiots who fuel the plane (United Airlines, just to give credit where credit is due) put in too much, and it's now too heavy to take off. Wouldn't you think they'd have figured this out over the past decades? 

I do.

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