I have entered into the abyss that is the official “12 Days of Christmas.” It is, for me, a time of reflection and a bit of darkness and a bit of light-everything in the past year sort of rolled into one.
I can’t quite remember when I started observing this time in my life-it used to be that I would write down my dreams only in this 12 day period (supposedly the dreams correlate to the next 12 months of your life). I write down my dreams every day now (yes, I am obsessive, I am aware) so this time period has turned instead into a time dwelling on the past year and looking ahead to the new year.
It has also turned into a time of alone for me-the way that we have worked out our schedule for the girls has turned into this time being a week that they spend with their dad and his family, and so for me, that means a lot of time alone, watching movies and reading books and cleaning.
I have learned in the past three years to pace myself-to remember, in the hustle and bustle of the time leading up to Christmas, that this time of quiet and alone is coming. I save up my most favorite Christmas movies (the ones that the girls have no interest in watching). I have three Christmas books that I purposefully haven’t started before this week (plus a nice, healthy stack of new books that were a birthday present from my much too generous sister). I love the idea of deep cleaning my house-a task much easier done when my girls are gone.
I still miss them, of course. I tell anyone who asks me about being divorced, and what it’s like to navigate various parts of it-sharing your kids is the hardest part. It feels like a piece of you is missing, no matter how much you may be craving some time to yourself. My girls and I are a unit, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything-having two girls (which was always my dream) is just as much fun as I always imagined it would be.
The old me got very caught up in doing everything just so. The twelve days of Christmas were observed in a rigorous manor that involved a thorough reading of each day from a book that I bought about just that topic, a recording of our dreams every day, and, of course, our Epiphany celebration with just the perfect Epiphany cake.
The new me has let go of a lot of that. The time that the girls and I have together has become about doing things that we truly enjoy and letting go of the rest of it-for advent, we love watching our Christmas movies and we always read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Of course, we still read a lot of books-but we don’t read nearly all of them anymore. We still decorate all of the trees-and we still love them all so very much-but we don’t bother about all the decorations-just the ones we like, the ones that have meaning or, as is more often the case, that remind us of something that we love (Betsy got an ornament this year that is a replica of The Waltons house and she has already declared it her most favorite ornament ever). We bake and sing and look at lights when we have a chance-but they are things we fit into what we are already doing.
My point with all of this is simply this-life changes. I’ve had some people recently in my life reach out to me, to ask me about my routine and especially my schedule with the girls-and the most important thing that I can think to share with anyone is that being flexible does not come easily for me, and so I have to work out exactly inside of my head how life will look on the days that the girls are gone.
It takes time to work all of this out. It takes time in a way that just nothing else does-life is different than it used to be, and so you have to invent new traditions, some that involve your kids and some that don’t. It you are anything like me, you have to prioritize and plan and make peace with the idea that you aren’t going to check every single box of that perfect family holiday.
Of course, as always, I am writing for myself and my perspective-I try never to presume that anyone else feels exactly like me. But I’ve had quite a few people reach out to me lately, people who are just at the beginning of this notion of their family looking so different from the way that they started out, and I never want to seem like I had this all figured out and under control from the beginning. I definitely didn’t and what I’ve learned has all been trial and error.
What I definitely know after 3 years of Christmas being completely different-your kids will not remember that they didn’t make a perfect gingerbread house, or watch every Christmas movie, or what have you. They will remember that you were together. Period.
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