And so today’s moment of happiness despite the news.
Christmas Eve. 2024.
One of the things Olivia and I have talked a lot about is how the days around a big event, like a holiday, or a moment that was completely unexpected, are harder than the actual holidays. I’ve said that I think it’s because we’re braced for the bigger ones. We know Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Michael’s birthday (December 27), and New Year’s Day are going to be hard. So we prepare ourselves.
And they are hard. But we’re braced.
Still, today, Christmas Eve, is hitting me really hard. I drove to the grocery store to pick up last minute things, started to sing along with “My Grown-Up Christmas List”, sung by Natalie Cole, and then had to pull over because I couldn’t see through the tears. The words that got to me: “No more lives torn apart,” and “that time will heal all hearts,” and “love will never end.”
My life has been torn apart. My heart is not yet healed. And love has, in a sense, ended. I’m a “widow” now.
So I’ve decided to step back from watching for a Moment today, and instead let that Moment be the memories I’ve being flooded with.
When I left and then divorced my first husband, Christmas Eve was the hardest day of the year, because he got our three kids on Christmas Eve. For the first years, we tried to celebrate Christmas day together, alternating homes, but that ended. When Michael moved in with me, and then we got married, he was very aware of this Christmas Eve sadness and he bustled around, helping to get our own traditions started. We wrapped presents together on Christmas Eve. He baked cookies. I made garibaldis for our Christmas Eve dinner. He came up with a new drink to try every midnight. We watched the made-for-tv movie, “The Homecoming” that created the tv show, The Waltons, and he didn’t tease me mercilessly about it, the way my first husband did. Though Michael did correct, every blasted year, the timing. In one scene, the Waltons family is listening to Fibber McGee and Molly (George Burns and Gracie Allen) on the radio, and Michael knew the radio episode, of course. He would sputter that they couldn’t be listening to that episode because it hadn’t aired yet.
Like grief, I braced myself for his rant every year, and got through it.
After the presents were placed under the tree, Michael made our newest drink and then we’d open our stockings together. Mine always had Junior Mints and Sno-Caps. I don’t know where he got the idea that I liked Sno-Caps, but I don’t. The little white pebbley things are annoying. But I never told him. He always got Circus Peanuts. We closed the evening by giving the pets their presents.
After Olivia was born, I had a little one to share Christmas Eve with again, but I still missed my big kids. We expanded our traditions to include going to a drive-thru Christmas light show here in Waukesha. We went as late as possible so that Olivia, as a child, wouldn’t have long to go to bed after we got home. The light show included an indoor electric train display, and Olivia was fascinated. There was a particular little red train car, that ran all on its own, that she loved. She’s 24 years old now, and when we go tonight, she will look for her little train car. I’d like to find it to give to her, but I haven’t been able to figure out what it is. And maybe that would take away the wonder of seeing it year after year.
Though we’re always braced for the year it’s not there.
We always asked someone to take our photo as we sat in whatever photo-op setting they had.
It was wonderful.
We didn’t know, of course, that last year would be our last year of being together. Of sharing the day and evening together, and then welcoming everyone else in the family on Christmas morning. First, the big kids. And then spouses, when some of the big kids got married. And then a grandchild.
But always, always, the cookies, the garibaldis, wrapping presents, driving through the Christmas lights, looking for the little red car, “The Homecoming”, opening stockings, and my exclaiming over Sno-Caps.
This year will be different.
Nobody is baking cookies, though my son is bringing some from the grocery store. I am not making garibaldis. I asked Olivia what she would like, and we are having chicken patty sandwiches and French fries. After I’m done writing this blog, I will be heading downstairs to wrap presents, by myself while I wrap Olivia’s, and then she will join me for the rest. We will go to the light show, with her sitting in the front seat for the first time. We will go in to the train building and look for the little red car. Please let it be there. I don’t know if we’ll do a photo. I will watch “The Homecoming”, and she might join me.
I hung everyone else’s stockings this year, but I did not hang up Michael’s. And I didn’t hang mine.
And so my Moment today?
Thank God for memories. Thank God for twenty-five years of marriage and twenty-seven Christmases together. Thank God for seeing the same lights over and over and still loving them, for watching a made-for-tv movie that I can recite all the lines to, and after a while, so could the man sitting beside me, even with his rant, and thank God for uneaten Sno-Caps.
As I walk through the new, it will be the old that gets me through. The old and well-loved and treasured.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Merry Christmas, Michael. I miss you.
And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.
