Freedom for Christmas

Christmas.

I love Christmas. I love picking presents for Jacob, for Jeremy and most of the people on my list. I love church on Christmas Eve -especially in my old church at home. I love Christmas dinner. I love the happy faces when you give a gift that's just perfect. I love wrapping presents. I love the good memories I do have. Decorating the house with my sisters and brother, a real Christmas tree and the ornaments we had as kids, baking cookies with my sisters. I miss Christmas dinner at Karen's with Grandma Dor. I miss my dad. I miss listening to the old Time Life 8-tracks he had and he'd sing those carols to me like he was still in the church choir. I miss my dad sitting quietly in his chair just watching with his smile, beaming with pride. I really miss my dad! I love the new memories Jeremy and I make with Jacob. I love all the squeals of delight from the little kids - past and present. I love leaving cookies and cocoa for Santa and reading the Night before Christmas. It's not about perfection, it's completely from my heart.

Christmas.

I hate Christmas. I hate the greedy, it's never enough, whining rants from Edna. I hate the memories of Christmas with her crying because we didn't get her the gifts she thought we should. I hate that she calls to bitch about every. Single. Gift. She gets. I hate when she tells me about all of the wonderful things she did for us for Christmas and how ungrateful her children are. I hate the memories of wrapping my own Christmas gifts from her. I hate her lectures about being a Christian and what Christmas is about. I hate hard, cut-out cookies with sugar icing that she made us bake. I hate that after Valerie was killed, she never wanted another Christmas tree (either I fought for it or I bought it). I hated that I had to spend Christmas Eve or morning at the neighbor's house watching them open their gifts, intruding on their family time - while Edna worked. Worse - the Christmas that she got in a huge fight with my dad, and the police came and took me away. I remember opening a stocking at the house where I stayed, and being told the one I had opened, wasn't for me.

I told my mother that Jacob and I were coming up home on the 26th & 27th. She said to me, "I hope you don't stay long, I have laundry to do, I have to take my car in, I have to go the Doctor, etc." Wow, Mom! It'll be great to see you too! Merry Christmas!

I've been telling myself that I need to keep in touch with her. For myself. For my own guilt. I'm not sure what's worse - my guilt or her. I'm the mushy one. I'm the sentimental one. I'm the one who always feels bad in the end for walking away from her. I'm the one who keeps coming back trying to make some type of relationship with her. I'm always the one who's hurt. So, my Christmas gift to myself this year is Freedom.

Freedom from guilt. Freedom from the meanness. Freedom from the pity. Freedom from her broken promises. Freedom from the hold she seems to think her money has. Freedom from the effort and freedom from the responsibility. Freedom from hurt. Freedom from ghosts. Freedom from the shitty memories Edna created. Freedom from my mother.

It's been a difficult year for all of us on some level. I'd like to say that next year will be better. My friends have lost people who are special to them this year, others are waiting to for someone special to give up their fight. Some of us have lost children and barely knew we were pregnant, and some are eagerly awaiting the birth of their first child in just a few short weeks (and so am I). Some have lost jobs, some are looking for new ones, and some are holding like hell to the ones we have. I wish all of you a little chunk of Freedom for Christmas. Freedom to laugh until you cry. Freedom to cry yourself to sleep. Freedom to feel the way you need to feel to get through what you need to get through. Mostly, I hope through it all, you can have a Merry Christmas with your families and enjoy what you do have right there in front of you.

Merry Christmas!