Christmas is a hard one for me... I feel like I run an emotional marathon all of December trying to convince my heart it should be merry and bright. But try as I might, joys and sorrows, past and present collide and I'm not sure what I feel, but it's not exactly merry....
Weeks ago I asked Kelli if she had any Christmas pictures from our years as young kids in California, after I couldn't find any in my stuff here....
She found three. Dad and her; and Kelli and a Smurf (I'm guessing 1981or 82). Me and my Cabbage Patch Astronaut. (1986, maybe)....
It's odd to me these are the only Christmas pictures of us... I'm sad that there aren't any Christmas pictures of us as a family....mom, dad, twin daughters, you know, together...I actually only know of two of those pictures in existence....us in Easter dresses at about 3 or 4 years old, sitting on my parents laps and a snapshot twenty years later at Kelli's BYU grad.
There are happy Christmas memories.....Dad would often bring out his guitar and play Christmas carols and mom spent most of December practicing endless Christmas hymns for special school programs and church services and Santa always brought us absolutely everything on our lists, every year.
We never spent a Christmas all together after we were nine.
We lost mom in our twenties and my Dad in our thirties. They had so few Christmases as parents and grandparents.
Christmas time is when most memories come flooding back of my parents and Christmas is strangely when I miss them the most.
My kids make Christmas joyous and irreverent and bright and hilarious and there are so many happy traditions we now share....but I also mourn a little at Christmas, wishing my parents could still be here and maybe that things could have been just a little different...together maybe.
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