Sometimes I think I should have named her Noel or Holly, this daughter of mine who loves Christmas. We first discovered her Christmas passion when she was just shy of two and able to hang ornaments on the tree for the first time. It was a Saturday evening, her eight o’clock bedtime arrived. She was decorating with such focus and content that I let her continue. She didn’t stop hanging ornaments until ten o’clock when she was scooped up by her daddy and carried upstairs. She cried until she fell asleep still holding an ornament in her little hand.
In January my Christmas loving baby turns eighteen. Yesterday she decorated the tree. I watched her space the bows evenly around the boughs, then choose ornaments carefully. First, she hung the small photo frames of her and her sibling’s baby pictures. Then she placed the ornaments they made in school, or at home with felt and stuffing or posterboard and paint. Looking down at the decorations spread across the ottoman, she asked me which ones were my favorite, which ones I wanted her to add next. I chose a few and then told her to choose from the rest, the ones she likes best.
Before my daughter hangs an ornament she stands back from the tree and accesses the space between the one’s already hung. She makes sure that no two colors or shapes hang together in redundancy. She takes her time. Yesterday, I laid back listening to soft Christmas music and watching her graceful movements as if she were a Christmas Eve snowflake.
Next year will be different, if life follows her plans, at this time next year, like her older sister, she will not yet be home from college. I have been contemplating how to decorate the tree myself next year. I’m thinking that my husband will take the tree from the attic just after Thanksgiving and set it up soon after. Then, I will take my time. One day I will add the bows, and for as many days as it takes me, I will hang an ornament or a few. I will make sure that they are evenly spaced and that no two similar shapes or colors hang too close together. Knowing me, I will have a good cry.
A snow globe, that’s what now feels like…like she and I are in a snow globe that has just been shaken and glittery snowflakes are floating around us… sparkling and twinkling. We both know that Christmas time ends, snow melts, glitter falls to the floor of the globe. She will turn eighteen; she will graduate from high school. Next year will be different. But for now, right now…I am smiling at snowflakes.
Back when my kiddos were little and my mother-in-law’s five children were newly grown up and out of the house, I remember her saying, that she slept most peacefully when all her kids were back home and sleeping under the same roof.
Last night, with both my daughters under our roof, I slept deeply. My oldest daughter is rarely home. Most of the time she is away at school and working a summer job through her University. She is here now for a very short visit to collect more belongings (furniture needed for the house she has moved in to). We will pack up our truck tomorrow and take a long drive…
A long drive with both of our almost grown-up daughters who my hubby and I will drive nuts (and visa versa). I’ll take the “oh mom”s and the rolls of the eyes for the time together in the cab of our truck. Until then, I look forward to tonight, sleeping once again with both girls under our roof.
Now if I could get my son here too…I’d sleep like a babe!
As my children are growing up and out I have come to realize how grateful I am to have had them before I became to ill to do so. (My youngest was one when my illness became debilitating). They have given me twenty or so years of waking up with plenty to think about other than my physical struggles. They continue to do so in new ways. My son and daughter in-law are having our first grandbaby early next year…which will add a new person to fill my thoughts.
Such mixed feelings…the loss as they “fly” away…the gratefulness that they graced this nest for so many years and now, that they occasionally fly back to check in and to sleep here again for a night or two.
