Borne Back Ceaselessly into the Past...

You win a prize if you can tell me where I got the title from... no fair if you Google it!

I was talking to my coworker today... we were laughing about our kids and the holiday - lamenting how it's December 1st and we already feel behind - which is so very silly because the truth is I don't feel so behind... I think about it sometimes and then realize gee... I'm ok... which seems to be my current mantra. I'm really ok. Small bites... I think that's the key - it's what I remind myself of all the time... little bits at a time. And so we were talking about the holiday, our kids and our Christmas traditions and we started talking about stockings... I looked to see if I'd talked about this before here and I haven't so I will tonight because I'm realizing as I work all this out, lay it out here in my blog - my brain made visual - I'm finding it possible to let it go. At least that's the goal :-) and it's been working.

My favorite little Christmas tradition is filling the stockings on Christmas Eve. The kids are older now and Santa has sorta fallen by the wayside a bit. Last year I found it hard to do Santa, we had gone to New York and that was Rebecca's big gift and Joshua had asked for a few small expensive things and so saving them and putting them under the tree on Christmas morning seemed silly. And this year it's not so different - they are both getting BIG ticket items for Christmas - things they already know - and there are a few little surprises they don't know about but to do the whole Santa leaving gifts under the tree thing just seems an effort to perpetuate something when we're all in on the secret. The one thing I do though, that I think I will probably always do, is fill their stockings... they get excited about that, it's the surprise, and they've always seemed to enjoy it so much. I spend a lot of time and effort on the goodies that I put in them. I get their most very favorite candies, a pair of the funniest boxer shorts I can find for Joshua and a pair (or two) of cute little panties for Rebecca - trinkets and treasures, silly and serious - small extravagances personally tailored to their personalities. I think they love them all so much because they are so personal.

Don't get me wrong - I don't do all this in an effort to achieve some kind of perfection. Tucked among the tiny treasures will be pencils and deodorant, practicalities that make life easier. I don't stress over the stockings - I stumble across the things I place in those stockings on Christmas Eve - things catch my eye or I'll already have an idea for something - and so this whole stocking tradition is fun for us all - it's never a chore, never a hassle... for me it's the Spirit of Christmas, and it's lighthearted and fun.

And so this comes to my story - my tale of a Christmas past. I've always done everyone's stocking, that is except mine because that's sorta of silly huh? My ex would do mine, and at first, in the beginning of our marriage, he would fill it with little things like my favorite candy and perhaps a piece of jewelry. I had no expectations about what would be in it, it was up to him, his choice - that's what made it so great. At some point, after Christmas became a chore for him, became uncomfortable and difficult and unbearable, he stopped putting any thought into it at all - and hey, that's ok... because I don't want a gift to be forced, it sorta stops being a gift if it's forced, don't you think? And then one Christmas Eve, as I was putting out the gifts and filling the stockings it occurs to him that hey, he's gotten nothing to put in my stocking. And so he tells me so... says he forgot... and I say ok... no big deal - all the while smiling and holding back tears at the same time. The worst part was his reaction to it all - instead of thinking about me, thinking about how I felt he took it, turned it into his own personal little pity party and called himself names and got upset. It had nothing to do with me really... if it did it wouldn't have happened in the first place... it was all about him, like so much else, and of course, once again, I couldn't feel bad because he was feeling bad and his bad feelings were more important than my bad feelings.

The next morning we're all up, opening gifts, I'm snapping pictures and the kids are reveling in their gifts when stocking time comes - and everyone is pulling out their treaures, laughing over the little funny things tucked inside and Rebecca says in her then innocent adolescent voice, "Hey momma, you must have been bad this year 'cause Santa didn't leave anything in your stocking!" A dagger in my heart - but I laughed it off... smiled and said, "Yeah I must have been" and gave her a hug. He looked at the floor and didn't say a word.

So now it's time to but that to bed, leave it where it's supposed to be - in the past. For so long now I've been holding onto stuff, situations, remembering, I think, as a way to prove to myself it all really did happen, it all really did have an effect on me. See... see... I wasn't crazy - it did happen, it did! Visually I can place it in the box, put the lid on and put it away - high up on the shelf. It's a memory, a part of my life and it's not going away - the trick though, as I'm learning little by little, is to place it all in the proper perspective. But perhaps that requires some distance, and as I've slowly moved forward I'm finally getting the distance needed. Christmas Past is over and it's time to focus on Christmas Present...