I'm like anyone else, I love Christmas time.The lights and decorations, the baking cookies, the shopping for gifts, even the lame company party. This year I love looking at all the creative ideas on Pinterest, and have even adopted a few of them! I love the music, the cold weather, the Christmas movies. All of it sets the mood for happiness and cheer, but I am torn. I want more than anything to have a happy holiday and God's given me everything I need to do that, but there is something missing. There is a hole in my heart that I feel even God can't fill.
Every year its the same. I take out the decorations and go through the box of ornaments and try to come up with something different. This year it was a bit challenging because we are in a new house, (well, new to us). God blessed us this year with the opportunity to be first time home owners, and we celebrated by buying our first real tree in the six years we've been married. It smells so good! I've even managed the courage to make my own tree skirt, and let me make this very clear, I do not sew! But I impressed myself and although sewing novices may be horrified by my work I think it turned out pretty.
So on with the Christmas decorations, I find new meaning and purpose with the few things I've managed to keep over the years, and remind myself that it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be me. It took me a few weeks of small spurts of time but I think I'm done. There is 2 weeks til Christmas and I would have liked to have had this done two weeks ago, but its not worth the stress. Its done now and we have two weeks to enjoy it. (Three or four if you count the week leading to new years and maybe the week of laziness before I get around to taking it all down!)
Back to the box of decorations, I dig to the bottom and then... I find it. The carefully packed little plastic Christmas container where I wrapped my treasures up in white tissue paper. I saw it and paused, then set it aside for another day. As much as adore the precious keepsakes inside, I can't bare to open it. Not yet.
I made a huge snowflake out of craft sticks, (thank you Pinterest), put some more decorations on the tree, and laid out my unfinished tree skirt under the tree. (some of it still has straight pins in it needing a final stitch). I hung some beaded garland over the doorway to the kitchen and stared at it to figure out what it was missing then placed some tree decorations on it. By now I have everything in my Christmas decoration box all over the bar in the kitchen, and my husband and I decide I have ADD because I can't focus on one thing at a time.
I don't have a place for everything, since this house is new to us we haven't had a chance to purchase all the little trimmings like an entry table and shelves for small decorative items. So I decide to put those things that I can't use this year back in the box and promise myself next year will be better (if I start in July). Away all the extra items go, back into the box, and I can start to see the bar again. Then I run across it again. The plastic container of items I avoided earlier. With a sigh, i decide I need to get this over with. Yes, its going to be painful.
I pulled the lid off, and inside was the white tissue paper, clean and crisp just like I left it when I put it away last year after Christmas. I took it out and carefully unwrapped it, and unfolded my four little red stockings. Each one, a little dirty from the years it endured, has a name in red sparkly glue across the top. I pulled them apart slowly, and read each one. "Michael, Joshua, Andrew, Nicholas".. then the tears came...
Memories of small hands reaching inside these stockings, pulling out little gifts and candy, faces smiling at the Christmas surprises it contained. The noise of Christmas morning, the excitement that filled our house. Memories flood my head as my heart traveled back in time and I feel those moments as if I were there. Feeling the tears streaming down my face, I hold these soft stockings to my heart, sit down, and cry, rocking them as if they were a small child. I miss... my boys. I miss them so much.
I miss their little hands, holding them. I miss them sitting on my lap, I miss the little voices and constant questions, the things that young moms think drive them crazy today. I miss reading them stories. I miss all the things from the good and fun to the bad and dreadful in the life of a single mom raising four boys. It was my job, my mission, my meaning to life. Some days it was the only reason I got out of bed.
These past 5 years its been difficult for me as I've had to create a new identity, in a sense. All I've ever known was "Mom". I've known being needed and being depended on. They still need me sometimes, but not in the same ways, of course. I still carry the title "Mom", but the meaning has completely changed. I'm still learning and trying to understand where my place is now. I felt empty for so long, because as swift and unexpected as they came into my life when they were born, sure enough they grew up and left. I thought at one time that I would celebrate the day when I was child free. How wrong I was. Being their mom was the most fulfilling thing I have ever done.
I am fortunate that two of my sons live close by, but the other two live 1300 miles away. It is even more painful that I can only see them one or two times a year. The distance makes holidays so difficult. I hope they don't struggle with it as much as I do. It kills me to think how much I have hurt them by moving so far away.
So this has become part of my Christmas ritual, if you will. I don't know how many years I will grieve my boys growing up and becoming men. On one hand I dread the moment of unfolding these memories because of the pain it causes my heart, but on the other hand, through the pain its like I'm able to have them back in that moment. I don't think I will ever be over missing them as children, preteens and teenagers. Its a chapter in my life that has ended, and left me feeling empty inside. But a new chapter has begun and I have to focus on how to fill it with beautiful memories for my future. I've learned from this experience, painful as it is, there will always be something to let go of.
Time to put the stockings away now. I will probably take them out one or two more times, as I go through the rest of the hand made ornaments and Christmas cards they made me over the years. These things are my most prized possessions. I wish I had saved every bit of everything they ever made. Some of my happiest times are looking at pictures and pouring over cards they made and notes they wrote.
Back in the tissue paper, back in the plastic Christmas container, until next time. Merry Christmas everyone, and know that if you have a hole in your heart from missing your children, you are not alone. To those who still have your children home with you, value this time, and save everything. You won't regret it.
