Christmas Past

My children have said this year I am finally selecting a Christmas card picture where everyone looks good not just me. Harrumph!

But as I take in the picture and see the veneer of “wanna be WASP perfection”, I reflect back to a Christmas that wasn’t as glossy or filled with joy. It is a difficult story to reflect back upon, but it is one that makes this and many Christmases since all the better to enjoy.

Central Park 2015

Dateline: December 24, 2004 5:30 PM

Turn signal on, merging over to the shoulder, trying not to cry, listening to a terrible rendition of White 

Christmas, I put the car into park.

The Arizona State Officer says, “Do you know how fast you were going?”

I say nothing so as not to cry.

He speaks louder, “Do you have an idea what the speed limit is?”

At this point one of the off-spring chimes in with “This isn’t her first ticket today.” I quietly send up a silent prayer of thanks and of patience so as not to yell at my child or the officer. I had gotten a ticket for driving too fast on the California side. Darn!

I hand over the license and registration saying nothing. He gives me a warning. I wipe the tears and quietly thank him saying “Merry Christmas.”

The officer probably didn’t want to hear how within the last 24 hours my husband had not come home, last we saw him he was writing his will. It is late on Christmas Eve and I am heading to my parent’s house to wallow in my sadness and fear.  

Our marriage was not as strong as it could have been at the start of year eleven. Trying to pay for private schools and the daily grind of a single income became too much. The year before, I had gone back to work and it left little in my emotional bank for being a wife much less a homemaker.  My husband felt the distance and I assume a bit of guilt that our lives had changed because his income had fluctuated so much. He fell off the wagon and started drinking again. Throughout 2004 there were several failed rehabs. It was all too much!

And when I found him in his office dazed and confused after not coming on home the night before Christmas, I asked him if he wanted his family or his addiction. He didn’t answer. I told him not to come home. We were finished. I could not do this anymore. I will never know how I found the strength to step away that day. It is the one thing my husband needed to get sober. No distractions or enabling.

I was numb. I felt like the air had been taken out of my lungs. That the chore of breathing was taking up so much effort. This was probably not the best time to take two children on the road and head to Arizona? Yet, space was needed from home. The children should have Christmas and I wanted their grandparents to fill the void that was now a shell of a mother and a father who was lost in his disease.

We are together this Christmas as we have celebrated Christmases together as a couple again since 2008. How grateful we are for sobriety, for time that can mend wounds, for the ability to patch up and strengthen a marriage that once was shattered. It sounds like a happy ending and yet our children bear the scars of parents that have lived in separate homes. There is a lot that happened during the four years apart and there will be more written on that later as I am no saint!

However as the story of the baby born in the manger to parents who struggled through a rocky start teaches, broken people can be redeemed through grace, trials, forgiveness, and really good lighting in Central Park for your pictures.