Ok, so it's not the night before Christmas, it's two nights before Christmas, but my house is very, very quiet.
My little girls are celebrating Christmas this evening with their Dad and his family. Their Uncle is visiting from CT so the family have brought the celebrations forward to include him. The girls will be so excited to see him! I know they're going to have a ton of fun. They're going to put on a show, their Aunt will help them. They'll pretend to be Little Ms Christmas's and hand out the presents, their Aunt will help them with that too. Although this year, Ella can read the gift tags herself, so she may not need any help. Their Granddad will sit in his comfy chair beside the big window that overlooks the beautiful garden and quietly open his presents, all the while watching his Granddaughters with a heart full of pride - the way we all feel when we watch them. The girls will be super excited to give their Dad the presents we chose for him. They'll eat the yummy food that Granny prepared and stick their little hands into the special Paulson snowball, searching for a gift with their own name on it...and eventually they will collapse into bed, excited, exhausted, happy.
Of course, I may be entirely wrong. They might be having the Christmas celebrations at their Aunt's house. The above is just how I remember Christmas used to be.
I think that you eventually become 'used' to being divorced, but I don't think you ever become used to not being with your children at times like these. I think that you always regret the break up of your family unit and I think it takes a long, long while to get to a point where you don't blame yourself for that. Right now, my heart is hurting, my tummy is churning and all I really want (selfishly) is for Christmas to be over. I don't want to rush the time S has with his girls, but I cannot wait to pick them up on the 26th and have them back in my arms. To listen to them babbling on about all the fun they had - and then to start all over again when we have our own Christmas celebration that evening.
Don't get me wrong, I may be sad but I'm also very happy that our girls are having fun tonight and that they're having special time with their Dad and the rest of their family. I'm very aware that when it's their time with me, it'll be their Dad who's missing them - and so the vicious circle continues.
With the divorce rate so high these days, and people moving to other countries, more and more families are split apart and what used to be a day for huge family gatherings is pushed out to other dates, divided into the morning with one family and the afternoon with another, and sometimes even celebrated on Skype. This is the first year in a very, very long time that I haven't been with any of my immediate family for Christmas. My girls are away, my Mom is in Grahamstown, my Dad is in Zambia and so is my brother. My other brother and his family live in Australia. I'll miss all of them on Christmas day - terribly. Luckily I have other incredible people in my life, who love me dearly, and I'll spend the day with them. We'll have fun, but it won't be the same. Just different...and I guess that these days 'different' is more of the same.
Right now, I just wish that Maya the cat ate chocolate and drank wine. She's a great companion, and very snuggly, but she doesn't giggle when I tell a joke, and there's no way she'll dance on the tables! ;)
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xoxo
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