All the Perfect You Need

            As I hugged one of my best friends at her father’s funeral last week, she said, “2019 needs to get the hell out of here.” I couldn’t agree with her more. I don’t have to tell you that I’m glad this year is almost over, but before I kick it out of the door, I am determined to make merry of what’s left. 

            I’m only 47, but I can say with certainty that this year has been the hardest of my life. I know worse challenges lie ahead, but right now I’m trying to find a comfortable spot in the denouement of 2019. 

            Luckily (or unluckily) there’s Christmas. I don’t recommend diving into the holiday season three months after losing a loved one, but here we are. I’ve always adored Christmas — music, friends, festivals, decorations, parties, church, the list goes on. 

            When I was five, my mother bought me a tiny tree for my room from Mack’s on Union Street. Oh, how I loved that tree. It made me feel like my room was my own apartment. When I got my driver’s license, I made sure that there were cassettes of Christmas music at the ready in my car throughout December. And during final exams in college, I blew off studying on a Saturday morning (let’s be honest, I never studied on Saturdays) and went to a local Christmas festival, where I purchased Snoopy wrapping paper and a matching Snoopy Christmas button. (I still have the button.) I think I was the only student there, but I didn’t care. Nothing was going to get in the way of Christmas.

            And now there’s this year. Thanksgiving proved to be mostly bizarre and sad without mom, so I can’t expect that Christmas will be better, but maybe that’s where the wink is. Yes, this Christmas will be different, and there are landmines of memories lining Santa Claus Lane, but if I look deeply to my children and all of the beauty surrounding us, I think I might be able to scrounge up some joy. 

            When I was pregnant during the holidays, I remember standing in my bedroom at my parents’ house with my mom. We were looking for something for the babies, and she smiled and told me, “You have no idea what an adventure you’re about to go on.” She was so happy I was going to be a mother because she remembered how happy she was when she became a mother. We both understood that motherhood is a gift to be cherished. 

            Part of that gift is celebrating Christmas. There’s nothing like seeing the season through your children’s eyes. My daughter has a collection of Santa hats and Christmas headbands that rivals Imelda Marcos’ shoe collection. I never know what kind of outfit she’ll come downstairs in, but I look forward to it every day, and I know my mom would get a kick out of it. I also know that she’d be mad at me if I didn’t because this is the adventure she was talking about. 

            Christmas is filled with miracles and mishaps. (My parents and I ate Christmas Eve dinner at a Waffle House one year — more on that later.) That’s what makes it so beautiful. It’s not going to be perfect, but it will most likely be good and sometimes that’s all the perfect you need. 

            Every year when we trim our tree, we have White Christmas playing on the television. I suppose now we should say that we stream White Christmas, but whatever, Bob and Betty still get together at the end, and I still want a Christmas dress like Betty’s. This year the movie finished before we were finished with the tree because we ran into, shall we say, “technical difficulty” with the lights. I became frustrated because I love decorating our home for Christmas, and this unexpected snag was delaying my plan. 

            In my recent habit of negatively thinking, I chalked this up to 2019. Of course, this would be the year that our tree would give us problems. But after a few hours of cutting lights off of a 12-year-old pre-lit tree and then running to Target for new ones, all of our ornaments found their places on the branches and our star took center stage on top just like it always does.

I looked at our tree and smiled because although it took it a while to get there, it was finally ready for us to enjoy. Somehow I think the same will be true for me this Christmas.