My daughter Francie, who turns 11 today, recently wrote an extremely badly "spilled" but very well-reasoned essay about how her Christmas tree represents the United States.

If we had not adopted Francie at birth, her last name would have been Muniz instead of Brent. She Mexican but also part American Indian, as am I, although she definitely has better hair -- long and wavy and truly black with blue sparkles in the sunlight. Several of her six siblings also were adopted; and so our family's ethnic composition is composed of tiny genetic slivers of many backgrounds. It would be ipossible to explain in one breath that we are Scots-Norwegian- English-Irish-Mexican-Spanish-Italian-German-Danish-Czech-Lebanese.

Each of the children has a regular 'Baby's First Christmas' ornament and a heritage ornament -- whether or not he or she was adopted. Francie's is a sagauro cactus that dangles above a pair of red cowboy boots with conchos because she is what is called "Tejana," a Mexican person born in Texas, as is her youner sister -- whose heritage ornament is a chili pepper (and this is entirely fitting).

In her essay, Francie wrote down something she has often said, that eveyrone in America was adopted because no one, even American Indians, grew up from the ground here (although Indians certainly have first dibs). This is not an original idea (Adam Pertman beautifully explained it in his book 'ADOPTION NATION') but Francie has not read Adam Pertman so this concept is her own -- at this time.

Although by no means a goody two-shoes, Francie is a very sentimental person who adores her siblings. She points out in her essay that unrelated people become brothers and sisters through adoption, just as my cousins from England became Americans through adoption two weeks ago when they took their citizenship tests.

And although Francie and her siblings do not get along -- we call the end of the week the "Friday night fights" here -- they do love each other very well. She is still idealistic enough to think that all people are brothers and sisters (for some people, this ideal never goes away) and it is a puzzle to Francie, like most children of her generation, that there was ever a time in her own country when people were disliked and excluded BY LAW for their skin color. In fact, she thinks I am lying when I tell her that as a kid not quite tall enough to reach them very well, I saw segregated water fountains in the Atlanta airport.

She has a picture of our America tree to go along with her essay; and I admit I was struck by its infinite variety. There are fishing snowmen, panda wrestlers and white-tailed deer cheerleaders that reprsent some of the kids' hobbies and aspirations. There are miniaturized book covers and a few historical figures, from Anne Boleyn to Edgar Alan Poe as well as a few cultural icons -- an Apple computer, a representation in gold of the sword in the stone and Scooby Doo.

It is not elegant. But it is rich, a patchwork quilt rather than a wedding ring quilt. I admire France for pointing how how its diversity mirrors our own. I admire her anyway. Except for abducting her sister's paint set, she is the most just person I know.

I don't remember ever experiencing race prejudice. One of the most violent arguments I ever had in my life was with my father because he refused to allow me to go to Jane Cabadanban's birthday party. Janet's dad was Fillipino, an illegal alien my dad called a "wetback." I was in five, in first grade, and didn't understand what he meant; but I knew it was a shame on him and on me. In that moment, I felt true hatred for him. Tell Janet I couldn't come was two minutes of pure agony because I not only had to lie but feel dirty. Where I have encountered it, I have tried to counter it with example and logic. But Francie's America tree makes the point better. You only have to believe it to see it.

It was this time of year, 22 years ago, that Stacey and I became friends.

I wasn't new in town; but I'd decided that my hair needed some professional attention, instead of my own hacksaw efforts. She was only 20, just out of cosmetology school. I had a passing acquaintance with her boss.

What I remember of first meeting her is that my one-year-old son, now 200 pounds and nearly six feet tall, was a tiny toddler, who politely touched the stars on the salon's tree with one finger -- a phenomenon that charmed Stacey no end. She said he was the most beautiful kid she'd ever seen.

For a mom with her firstborn -- well, she had me from hello.

I didn't have many friends then and I don't have many now. But something about Stacey was just so effervescent, comic and dear -- she had the same luck with men that I did (slim to none) and the same absurd sense of the universe -- that I began getting my hair cut more often.

And then, we started packing a hamper with wine and cheese and going to sit on the grass and listen to the symphony. We went out to dinner. We went dancing at a cowboy bar. I met her family and she met mine.

When my husband died, not long after he turned forty, of colon cancer, she came to my house and brought wine, comfort and good scissors. When I adopted my little girl, a year after his death, she was one of only two friends who encouraged me rather than suggesting I take some really good meds. I asked Stacey to be one of Francie's godmothers; and she remained the one who took that sacred responsibility most seriously.

She dressed up for the premiere of a movie made from one of my books. I wore silk to her wedding, when the boy who'd loved her since she was 16 finally convinced her that she loved him as much. Francie, then three, was a flower girl. I was remarried by then, for just a year. My husband said of Stacey, "You may not be the best friend she has. But she's the best friend you have."

One spring when Stacey was 32, she grew alarmingly thinner and pale. She was always tiny; but this was extreme. As if someone kept whispering it in her ear, she knew that she had colon cancer. But she could not convince a doctor to do a colonoscopy. When she was successful, after a year of all of us trying to talk anyone into it, the tumor was at Stage Two. But she beat the odds.

Nine years later, she is cancer-free.

She battled infertility and then diabetes. Last year, she adopted Gabriela, and asked me to stand godmother to her. When I told Stacey that Gabriela was the most beautiful baby I'd ever seen, I meant it.

Two weeks ago, an infection landed her in the hospital. Rail-thin but beautiful, she had no reserves to fight it. She had pneumonia. It got worse. Stacey was put on a ventilator. Two nights ago, her heart stopped twice. The second time, it took 45 minutes to start it. That's too long sometimes. But not always.

There's no bargaining with fate.

I know because those are dice I've rolled before.

I do things I know are silly.

I light candles to the Virgin of Guadelupe. I wish that a friend's blessed medeal from Lourdes that he tried to send me had actually arrvied. I think of her smile a dozen times a day.

One of my favorite seasonal songs has always been 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,' because it contains that lines, "Come next year, we all will be together/if the fates allow..."

But so much happens in a year's time that we never know if the fates will allow us to be together; and it's an old adjuration to live each day as if it was our last. Of course, we don't. Stacey and I were to have our holiday visit, with our daughters, the day she went into the Emergency Department. I'd cancelled our last date -- kids, craziness, stuff that really doesn't matter. I thought we'd put it off for a few days. Now, I don't know how long it will be until I can touch her hand again.

I'll be there the day she comes out and every day for as long as I live. I want to say that I know she will survive. But I only beg for that.

If you knew her, you would, too. Still, I wish you would anyway.

Jackie M.

Picture me: I'm in the midst of research for a novel in for teens which two very young girls who have been close friends from birth and who are mistaken for each other during treatment after a car accident. This is like, but also very unlike, the recent case of two college young women who were in a similar accident -- and another incident of the same kind happened some years ago.

Their story was the inspiration.

But my story isn't about the mix-up.

It's about how tragedy, and the love that accompanies tragedy, ripples outward and changes the tone of life in an entire community -- for worse AND for better.

Part of the research I needed to do was observation in a Level One Trauma Center (and after a lengthy approval process, I did).

I also visited a rehabilitation unit for people who sustain brain injury after coma. The latter was a place of enormous poignancy, of hope and acceptance, of life promised and life as it actually will turn out to be. By the time a rehabilitation process is completed, most parents, spouses or children have gone through the process of mourning and have accepted that their wives, their babies, their husbands, their siblings will never be the people they were or would have been.

They may live functional, even happy lives with limitations -- but not the lives they once had every right to expect.

As I did this research, I planned for the holidays. Part of every holiday is a traditional visit with one of my (few, and far between) best friends. She is my 11-year-old's godmother; I am godmother to her 20-month-old daughter. Stacey. That's her name. Aunt Stacey to my children, even the grown son.

We have been friends and confidantes for 22 years.

When my husband died from colon cancer, she stood unflinchingly beside me. When SHE learned, at age 32, that SHE had colon cancer, I stood beside her as she -- against amazing odds -- survived Stage Two colon cancer, without chemotherapy.

But Stacey didn't come to our planned coffee that day.

She collapsed at home, when a bothersome strep infection that morphed into pneumonia wracked her always-too-small and delicate body. At the hospital, she was placed on a ventilator; and her lungs responded to treatment. Her befogged state of mind began to clear. She began to shrug off unconsciousness; and because she is a pistol, she began to chafe at her confinement.

I heeded the wishes of her immediate family (who are people I know and love).

In those first days -- dear God -- I stayed away.

I would see her in days to come, when she was better, out of the ICU.

Not quite a week ago, in the wee hours of the morning, Stacey somehow removed her own ventilator. Although the ICU staff knew about this terrible glitch almost immediately, a few hours later, she suffered what probably was a heart attack, for lack of a better way to explain it. She was resuscitated almost immediately. Not two hours later, it happened again. This time, it took some 45 minutes to start Stacey's heart.

Sometimes, the longer it takes, the dicier the outcome.

Perhaps that heroic effort should never have been made. And perhaps it is the most singular gift of her (always against the odds) life.

But the next day, a scan of Stacey's brain showed minimal, if any, activity. A repeat scan the next day showed.. the same thing.

By the time I saw her, she was gnawing at the ventilator and her half-closed eyes were dull. No tears were allowed in her room, by her mom's directive. In my car, I screamed and pounded the steering wheel. Then I went home to tell my 11-year-old daughter the news about her godmother. It felt the way it felt to tell my older sons -- who were then only 9, 6 and 3 -- about their father.

Today, Stacey doesn't look the way she did when I first saw her at the hospital.

An opening in her windpipe meant the vent could be removed, with all its tape and nasty trappings.

She can breathe on her own part of the time. With her hair freshly washed and her pedicure, she looks endearingly, horribly... almost just like herself. Each day her wake and sleep cycles become more regular. Her striking, long-lashed blue eyes are open and clear. Sometimes, they seems to have a puzzled, annoyed expression.

Each day, hope rises. And hope falls.

She doesn't respond to voices or commands, to her name or her to baby's voice.

No one knows if she ever will.

There are few (and far between) stories of awakenings that happen after weeks, months, once in a great while, even years. But no one can cause them to happen. Nothing can be done. No one can intervene. No one knows a way in.

As usual when I write a novel, it seems to take on a life of its own in the universe.

Eight years ago, I wrote about a man I would marry, if I didn't know better: He literally showed up on my doorstep the day the printed books arrived; and we married six weeks later. When I wrote about a contested adoption, my newborn little girl's birthfather came out of nowhere to try to claim her. Because I was already writing about the rules of such a terrifying contest, I knew them all too well. I knew that the odds were stacked high against us; and yet, Mia is here now, fighting with her little brother.

That time, fate smiled.

But in the ICU, where a loss of brain function occurs, miracles are in short supply.

I should be like my friend, Patricia Wood, and write a novel about someone who wins big in the Lottery. I have spent too much time in those places in life where the trap door opens beneath our feet.

If I could write this story, this is what would happen: I would be standing in the room when Stace -- in her dear, low-pitched Ann Southern voice -- would suddenly say, "Jack? Where am I?" I would cry out in rapture; and the 30 people who visit the waiting room (for Stacey is so very beloved) would catapult down the hall to the little curtained alcove where she lies.

It's my story. So I can write it as I choose.

But it is a story.

As usual, I know too much already. Against the happy ending, the odds are stacked, high -- very high. What may have happened is the event hospital personnel fear most: The successful restoration of a young and healthy body with the lights on, and -- so far -- nobody home. This is their immense agony, even as they fight for vital signs, the trepidation that makes every rescue a gamble.

I know everything, and still, in the morning, before am fully awake, I hear the Stacey-voice -- teasing me, telling me, laughing with me ... oh, yes, and telling me what she always said --- that if she didn't have bad luck, she'd have no luck at all.

I cannot tell you what I would give -- a limb certainly, my hair, my hand -- to hear that funny, scratchy little voice once more.

Give me one last chance, Stace.

Give your many other and dearer friends, and your husband, the man who has loved you since he was a boy and you were a girl, and the beautiful daughter you two found and adopted (against the odds, always against the odds) and your elderly parents, your brother and sister -- give all of us one last chance.

I will never break another lunch date because life got "too crazy."

Life was never so crazy that we didn't have time for each other. We simply thought we had all the time there was.

Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me. Let this story have the kind of ending critics have sometimes have accused me of writing into my novels -- the kind that could never happen in real life.

By the way, this novel I'm writing will be called ALL WE KNOW OF HEAVEN, from a line I've always loved from the poetry of Emily Dickinson: 'Parting is all we know of heaven/And all we need of hell"

with friendship,

Jackie M.