Making a list and checking it twice...

Ah... 'tis the season.

Christmas for me used to be a big Chaotic production.  As a child I took my Christmas money to the local stores after school had let out for the season and purchased what I could for my large family from what little I had.  Later, as a teen, I would take the bus into downtown Vancouver and spend most of my money on my Mom (even calculating the taxes into the total) with a little left for small tokens for brothers, sisters and friends.  I started making gifts after a while, and discovered my favorite Christmas cake and cookie recipes at the age of 13!  I still make those items every year, even though life is very different now.  I have photos in my personal album of me sewing gifts for various family members so all would have a gift under the tree - I especially remember the night shirt and night hat combination I created one Christmas eve for my loving Brother-in-law "D" way back in the day.  He wore it Christmas day with a smile on his face and that made me very happy!

As time went by and I moved away from home I tried to capture something by having friends and family visit "our" home and share in the Christmas spirit.  First on Christmas Eve, then as my children started arriving on the last Sunday before Christmas.  I would make handmade invitations, send out Christmas cards and a newsletter, and photos of the kids to close relatives.  I would prepare piles of preserves from my summer stash of fruit, clean the house (and once in a while the house would be cleaned by professionals for which I was very grateful), decorate, bake, cook and freeze whatever I had room for.  The light display on the front of the house grew;  the decorations became more elaborate and the letters became longer, but there was something missing.  I was trying too hard to grab hold of something and make my family share the feeling when they weren't feeling it.  In fact, my marriage had fallen apart a long time before and my "partner" had emotionally checked out, so I was grasping at something that had slipped away a long time before.

I spent the first Christmas on my own mourning the loss of something I had never had.  I still baked, cooked, cleaned, sent out cards and invited friends to partake, but I scaled down so much, and ended up realizing something.  Just like the Grinch I realized  it comes without ribbons, it comes without tags, it comes without packages, boxes or bags...   I knew finally in my heart that really, it's just another day on the calender if you don't have someone you love to share it with.

This year is another "first".  My "first" Christmas as a stronger, healthier person.  I asked a friend to come over last week and help me take all the Christmas decorations out of the attic. She is a young Mom with two little toddlers who is also starting over and has nothing. There were 14 rough totes, boxes, containers and packages, loaded with every item you could think of, and at the end of that evening half of them went home with her...  Looking at some of those items was bittersweet.  Decorations I had bought for the kids - little angels, snowmen, wreathes with doves, baubles and pinecones - all of them sitting in boxes, unwanted, unneeded and forgotten.  I know now that my kids didn't enjoy Christmas.  It was just a rush of Chaos for them, and it was harder because at the end of the day they didn't even have school to go to so they could get away from the final meltdown of their parent's relationship;  that long, slow slide into oblivion with him running and me chasing him, until I stopped chasing and he just ran away...  and they knew that they weren't on either of our radar...  It wasn't the stuff they wanted, or the trappings or the feast, the gathering of people they didn't know... it was being made to realize that they mattered more than the "stuff" that made up what I thought of as "Christmas".

So this year there will be no letter.  I will ask a few dear friends to celebrate some things with me this year;  growth, survival, joy, self realization and love.  Always love.  I will make time to spend with my kids, each in their own time, to enjoy and celebrate my love for them in a kinder, softer and gentler way.  There will be enough lights to sparkle in my eyes - and joyful because I put them up on my own.  There will be  enough tinsel and baubles, enough pine boughs and holly branches.  But not more than I can do for myself.  I will still go to cut my tree - the way Dad did when we were small - and decorate it with too many lights and too many decorations.  My home will smell of baking Christmas cake, shortbread and balsam.  And there will be peace.  And many small dogs....