He is real to my sweet Lily-Girl.
And believing he is real is only hurting her.
I never wanted to "do the Santa thing". I always felt that it was a bad message to send...Santa brings toys to all the good boys and girls in the world.
No. Actually there are many, many good boys and girls in the world who won't even get dinner that night.
But Shawn insisted. He called me a Scrooge. He asked why "I would want to take that away from the kids".
So I acquiesced.
It seems to me that every Christmas has been a disappointment to my kids.
In movies kids see knee high piles of presents surrounding a big tree on Christmas morning.
Except it's not like that when your parents are divorced. Your gifts get spread out among multiple celebrations. It's hard to manage your expectations when you're a kid.
After the divorce I basically turned Christmas over to Shawn and his family. The day itself didn't matter to me.
We had a beautiful Winter Solstice celebration with my Mom each year that included gifts as well as readings from various religions and a lighting of candles to welcome the longer days. The kids always wondered of Santa was going to visit our house as well as Daddy's but I just told them it didn't work like that - only one stop per kid.
The December before Shawn died I decided to celebrate Christmas Day with the kids (in addition to Solstice) because I wanted to take them to the mountains and enjoy a special day with them.
Before we even hit December 24th the L's had celebrated: Solstice with Grandma (and gifts), Christmas with Daddy (and gifts) and Christmas with their paternal Grandparents (and gifts). They were ALL fired up because they were thinking, "This is great! We've already received all these cool things and the BIG day is yet to come!"
They aren't spoiled kids. Or entitled kids. But they are kids. And they do like presents.
On Christmas Eve, after hearing their excited chatter, I realized...they are expecting gifts from SANTA under the tree. I had spent a lot of time selecting gifts that I thought they would love.
I didn't plan on giving Santa any credit for things I had so painstakingly purchased!
And I didn't really have a lot of extra money left to go buy more things.
And yet there I went off to Walmart on Christmas Eve.
On the barren shelves I found mostly cheap plastic junk that I am inherently against.
Finally I saw a variety of (cheaply made) board games - chess, checkers, bingo, etc and decided that maybe Santa would bring these types of things as a message that he wanted you to play nicely with your sibling.
Christmas morning arrived with excitement and the gifts were opened in no time flat.
And then my kids began acting like brats.
I finally called them out on their behavior and said, "I'm sorry if Christmas didn't live up to everything you expected."
And Lennon. Poor boy. He was foolish enough to indignantly say, "Yeah! Five gifts isn't enough!"
There was a lot of Mommy-Guilt laid down in the next 30 minutes with threats of taking the toys to Goodwill for other, more grateful children, to enjoy and long statements of how they had "robbed me of any joy that I might have felt from watching them play with these toys".
We all were crying. It wasn't pretty.
It was when I felt myself wanting to tell them, "You don't know ANYTHING about shitty Christmases! Let me tell you about the time my Dad told my Mom to throw away all of my Christmas gifts and then beat my feet with a 2x4 all day" that I realized STOP!! This isn't about them - it's about you!
They wrote me beautiful thank you notes and I calmed myself and apologized.
Eight months later their father killed himself.
And four months after his death the kids went off to Florida by themselves to see their paternal grandparents.
They had gone by themselves to see their grandparents on multiple occassions and had spent most Christmases of their lives there so it seemed like an okay decision at the time.
I was so, so wrong.
Lily was very homesick and cried on the phone every time she called me.
When she came home she was an emotional wreck for months.
How stupid could I have been to not realize that Shawn's parents were as deep in their grief as the rest of us? They weren't able to provide Lily with the kind of emotional support she needed because they needed it themselves.
And this is a family whose motto could be "Suck it Up" - you just don't talk about feelings.
This doesn't work for Lily.
She is highly emotive.
And the thing that threw her for a real loop was Santa...
Shawn's parents hung a stocking for Shawn, just as they always had. It was comforting for them.
On Christmas morning the kids got up to dig through their full stockings. After sorting through her assorted packs of gum, candies, toothbrushes, etc Lily discovered that Santa had brought Daddy an ornament in his stocking.
When she got home she told me this...
"I know why Santa only brought Daddy one thing in his stocking. It was because he was bad last year."
Oh, God! What do I say to that?
There IS no Santa! It was your Grandma that put in the ornament because it helped her with her grieving!
But, of course, I couldn't tell her that right then.
And then there were the gifts under the tree from Santa.
Her younger cousins who are basically hell on wheels and who had been harassing Lily endlessly had mounds and mounds of presents because...all their presents from Mom, Dad, two sets of grandparents, Lennon, Lily and Santa were all in one place to be opened on the same morning.
Lily was so upset because she couldn't figure out why her cousins got so many gifts when they had been behaving so badly.
Oh, Lily. It's because there is no Santa and the world isn't a fair place.
Here we come up on Christmas 2012.
Lily still believes in Santa even though he has let her down over and over.
She decided not to go to Florida - even though her brother wants to and is going. She wrote a beautiful letter to her Grandparents telling them how much she loves and misses them but that "Christmas is a really hard time" and that she is "still grieving a lot".
She specifically requested that we have Christmas at home - our home. She wants to wake up in her own home on Christmas morning to the presents Santa brought.
Writing this, part of me thinks maybe I should try to make the big Christmas for her she's always wanted. I can afford to spend more on presents this year than I could a few years ago.
But I also know that happiness doesn't come from THINGS and that no amount of gifts will fix the anxiety she feels over Christmas.
I need to talk with her soon (with the help of a therapist) and let her know that Santa resides within all of us. We can be Santa to others who are in need - we've always donated to charity as a family but we could emphasize it even more this year.
We can decorate the house heavily the way she envisions a house should looke (lots of lights!).
We can do our Solstice Celebration sans gifts.
I can ask all of the friends and family who give the L's gifts at Christmas if they are willing to sacrifice seeing the kids open the gifts in person and send them to the house so they can be opened on Christmas morning.
I can give her love and hugs and time together.
1 comment:
My heart broke one day when my youngest daughter said that the reason she loved Christmas so much was that all the poor children in the world got spoiled for one day by Santa. I almost broke down and told her the whole horrible truth. But I didn’t… then.
A few times when they were younger and asked me if Santa was real, I used to answer that he was only real to those who believed in him.
Then finally, when they were 9 and 10 years old and asked me the specific question of whether I was Santa, I grinned and said yes. They were actually so fine with it, that I was surprised. They thought it was fantastic that I had gone to all that effort over the years to make life fun. Of course there were lots of questions that followed about the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy and for a time, I was their hero. I’m so glad it turned out like that because I remember crying when I found out there was no Santa. But my mother sat me down one day and told me without me asking. I have taken the approach, on the advice of a wise friend, to answer all questions honestly and age appropriately only when asked and not to offer too much information out of my own. This has worked well in every area, including suicide.
As to the guilt thing. I have been living this for over 5 years since my husband died. And I only realized it recently with a trip to my therapist. She told me that she only just noticed it too. I didn’t have guilt over the fact that I couldn’t save my husband for me, as I know I did my best, or for him, because he really didn’t want to be here. My guilt was over the fact that it was because I couldn’t save him, that my kids will never have a dad. That hit home! And because I don't really want to give them a new dad (not keen for new relationship). And I’ve been over doing everything for the past five years out of that guilt. It’s time to let it go now. It’s not my fault they don’t have a dad. And I am doing the best I can. So are you.
I think that some special time together will be the perfect Christmas gift.
Sorry for all the long messages, I can just relate to you so much. Lots of love from across the world. x
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