This week is the anniversary of adopting both my kids. I will never forget the year I brought home a 10-year-old for Christmas. After eight years of unsuccessfully trying to have a child and five years of waiting for this first adoption to go through, being in a judge's chambers on Christmas Eve's Eve to finalize my son's name change is still one of the most glorious memories of my life. My name went in the space on the birth certificate that said "Mother." My son would finally be allowed to call me Mom.The courts were closed on Christmas Eve's Eve three years later, so my daughter's adoption fell on December 22. (We were given a choice of Dec. 21, Dec. 22 or Dec. 27.) My car was graffitied during the night before the adoption, and I didn't want our special day to be spoiled by driving 40 miles to and from the courthouse in a marked car that surely would have garnered unwanted attention. So I spent the chilly morning of my second adoption applying Pepsi to the panels of the car, and it worked! You couldn't tell my white car had been zebraed during the night! A Christmas miracle! A Christmas miracle in addition to being able to adopt an 8-year-old girl after just one year of legal red tape.
The three of us celebrated back-to-back Gotcha Days for the next five years. Gotcha Day, Gotcha Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day. What a week of fun every single year!
Both birds prematurely left the nest the following year, and I spent my first Christmas ever alone. Totally alone. Or so I thought at the time. When I look back at that grim year now, I remember going for a run on a snowy Christmas Eve morning, just to keep my mind too busy to mourn, when one of the women from my church came running out of her home to greet me as I passed. It was snowing and cold. I could see through her living room window she had family gathered from across the country. She was wearing a housecoat and slippers. Yet she came running outside in the bitter cold to catch me and invite me in. She knew I was alone. And sweaty! Yet she wanted me to share in her family's warmth.
A couple of friends at work insisted I have Christmas dinner with them. One at noon, one at 6.
I helped serve meals in a homeless shelter. I left handmade gifts on the doorstep of a shut-in.
One of my favorite songs comes to mind. "You're not alone..." Even though I thought I was, I was never alone, even in my darkest hours.
Some of my best Christmases and my worst Christmas. Memories come flooding back. Some good, some sad, most precious. It's the fabric from which my life is woven.
I miss the life I built with my kids. And yet, I wouldn't trade my Christmases now, with my best friend and soul mate, for the world.
We hang blue lights, we collect things with blue snowflakes. The presents beneath our tree are wrapped in blue and white snowflake paper. We wrap up together in a blue fleece blanket covered with silver snowflakes, and we sip sugar-free hot chocolate from blue and white snowflake mugs. Some years we even get to go cross-country skiing on Christmas!
I was very lonely once. But not any more. This is one Christmas I absolutely will not be blue!
