A couple of nights ago, after Graham had gone up to bed I was snuggled up on the couch in our living room looking at the Christmas tree lights glowing and feeling especially nostalgic.
I was thinking about how the lights on our family’s Christmas tree were always yellow-gold. My mom decorated our tree in gold and red, and the smell of tinsel garland always takes me back to the days in my childhood when my family was intact. I realized that it has been twenty years since my mom and dad split up. That thought gave me real pause…I had to do the math several times before I could truly believe it has been that long since I was one in a family of four: Mom, Dad, Matt and I.
The first Christmas after my mom and dad divorced, they did their best to make things easier for us kids. We had moved out of our family home with my mom to a new apartment in the same city, and my dad had kept the house, buying my mom’s share of the place so he could stay there. Matt and I still had our bedrooms there at our house, as if nothing had happened. Mom stayed on the couch in our family home on Christmas night that year so we could be together on Christmas morning.
I remembered how we played Christmas music on the tape deck, and after Matt and I had opened up our traditional Christmas Eve pajamas, Mom and Dad danced in the living room to a song that played, my mom in her black velvet housecoat. Matt and I sat on the carpeted floor in our new jammies, watching and hoping this meant something was going to happen…the something that kids of divorced parents always hope might happen: a reconciliation.
Of course that wasn’t to be, but that year after the divorce, Mom and Dad gave Matt and I a little something special, and I like to think that it was their way of saying good bye to all of the Christmases in years past that they had made magic for us kids.
After that, Christmas was never quite the same, and Mom and Dad certainly never celebrated the holiday together again. I’m grateful for the the memory of that last Christmas Eve dance, tucked away into my heart.
That might be the sweetest story ever.
I’m happy that you have your memories to remember.
That’s nice – I am always so ahppy to hear about people who manage to put aside their differences like grownups for their children, because too often you hear the opposite.
Fortunately, by the time my parents finally divorced, we were all grownups, it was amicable enough, and there was only rally one christmas that I remember being super awkward. Now, we celebrate it with everyone – my sister and her boyfriend, Misterpie and I, my mom and my dad and his grilfrind. I love it that way.
…and, hopefully, they never meant for you to have Christmas eve be changed forever.
I’m glad you have that tucked away in your heart, it’s a beautiful.
That’s a beautiful story, Amy. I’m impressed that your parents managed to be so mature as to help you through that first Christmas this way. I have a lot of baaaad divorced parents Christmas memories, so I know what I’m talking about …