My mother loved Christmas. She was as excited as a child. She loved the music, though she couldn't sing a note, the tree, the food, the stockings, and the gifts. She made fudge and bourbon balls and divinity. She had a big Christmas Eve dinner and then we opened one gift. The next morning we rushed in to the living room, opened our stockings and then our gifts. She hadn't really had Christmas as a child, her family was too poor, and one year she was given coal in her stocking for some mysterious misbehavior, and I think she wanted to make Christmas what she had dreamed of as a child of the depression. So she was the light of the holiday, but also the dark. When we were older and then as adults she drank too much and ruined every Christmas. She would fight with my father, his gift was always a disappointment, whatever it was, and when she was drunk she could and did say cruel things. Christmas is complicated. For most of us.
This time I am acutely aware that this may be my daughter's last Christmas. I want it perfect, but there is much sorrow in all of our hearts. We will make it happy for the kids, but a shadow is over us adults. I can't bear to think of how this affects our daughter. Bless her, and let there be a miracle.
So heart moving
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