I didn’t want it to come, but it came anyway. I worried about how I’d get everything done in three days. There was no way to stop it.
Christmas was coming, whether I wanted it to or not.
I’ve always loved this time of year, but in the last few years, with traumatic events having occurred in December, I find myself bracing against it. It’s as if my body remembers, even though my mind tries its best to forget. This year, in particular, was hard and I wasn’t aware until right up until celebration time.
We’d had a crazy year and I found myself compartmentalizing so many things.
As a hairdresser, it’s the busiest time of year, and for the last few, my husband and I had waited until the last three or four days before Christmas to shop. Bills come first, and we never know exactly how much money we’ll make, being self-employed. Obviously, that determines how much we’d spend.
We had moved in with his parents in October after a really rough year and a half. The responsibility of not having to decorate was a relief. I’ve always felt that, as a mother and a wife, it’s my job to set the tone. I make the holiday by the atmosphere I create.
None of that would be my responsibility. I was exempt and trying to escape into my work.
I worked up until December 21st, and the husband and I planned on knocking out all of our shopping in a few days. This is very easy for me.
I don’t go shopping – I go getting. When I leave the house, I know where I’m going and what I’m going to buy.
The youngest boy had been sick with what I’d thought was a cold, so he’d been home with Grandma while I went to work. When he wasn’t getting better, I became suspicious His illness had gone on for four days – too long for just a sore throat and a cold. The first morning I was off, I asked him if I could look in his throat, and it was clearly obvious: Strep.
I hauled him off to the doctor. I didn’t tell him he’d be swabbed. He was pissed. I got his medication and brought him home.
Christmas Eve came and we were planning to celebrate at my brother’s house where my parents would be staying, as they come from out-of-town. But, our house has always been the one where we’d celebrated the holidays. It’s usually my mom and I who prepare the food together. She and I play a game I call “cocktails around the world,” and they stay at our house.
This has been the way we’d been doing it for years. At the time, I was relieved not to have all that hanging over my head. I thought this was a good thing.
Until Christmas Eve came.
That afternoon, my oldest son told me he wasn’t feeling well, either, and that he wasn’t sure he’d be going with us to my brother’s house.
I completely understood, as I’d had a sore throat as well. As we gathered everyone up to leave, he decided to come and we all barreled into my family’s celebration.
I was aware I didn’t feel well, but I had stuff to do, and I knew I’d be able to sleep eventually.
Dinner was delicious, and my brother and sister-in-law’s house was beautifully decorated. Once everyone had finished eating, we went into the living room and my parents and brother’s family proceeded to shower my boys with gifts. This was very unexpected. We’d agreed years ago that we wouldn’t exchange presents. I hadn’t brought a thing. I felt terrible and embarrassed.
I was still shell-shocked from the last 18 months, barely thinking about anything besides what had to be done.
It came time to leave, as my oldest was feeling very poorly by then, and it was time for my youngest’s next dose of antibiotics. I’d left them in the fridge at home.
As I got up from the couch to hug and thank my brother, I walked past their Christmas tree.
He is, by far, one of the sweetest men I know – second only to my husband – and I think he knew what was going on with me, even if I didn’t.
I turned as my mom approached me, and I looked at the tree and started to say, “I miss my own tree. I miss having my own house.”
The second sentence came out completely garbled with tears. They poured down, hitting me like a ton of bricks. I had not even thought about anything to do with the holiday. Truth is I hadn’t let myself think about Christmas because I didn’t really want it to come – different from the previous years. Even different from the year when my boys were so graciously given money from an anonymous person.
This year, I had tried to numb myself. To not feel. Maybe I thought if I did that, I could ignore the festivities and not feel the losses with which I hadn’t let myself deal.
Ones that had occurred six years before.
Funny, when you stop running from feelings, they find you, crashing like a wave over your head.
I didn’t want the holiday to come. Plain and simple. I didn’t want to do it because none of the particulars were right. Nothing was how I knew it. None of my own decorations or ornaments were present, all the things I’d collected throughout the years. None of those things were in the house we were calling home. I wanted to skip everything and fast forward to January.
But the gift of Christmas is just that. A gift.
I wasn’t ready to receive it and God (the Universe, whatever you believe) was profoundly patient in waiting for me to accept it. Waiting for me to be ready to understand that this gift didn’t require anything in return.
Even when I felt I had nothing left of me to give.
The gift of being loved by my parents and the rest of my immediate family, being cocooned, having a soft place to land until I could properly acknowledge what He already knew. I was sad, and in mourning. I had done my very best to ignore it all, stuffing it down amidst the chaos and work that had become my life.
The gift of Christmas, I believe, is love. Unconditional love.
I didn’t want Christmas to come but it did. It came without bells, without bows, because a gift of that size cannot possibly be contained in a box.