Twenty five years ago, I started an annual tradition of taking a picture of our family on Christmas Eve, usually in front of the tree, to include in a family holiday book. When I started the book, I had 25 years to fill, and it seemed like an eternity as I leafed through the pages, figuring out where that book would end, and how old we would be. Christmas of 1984 was the first one. I was 24 years old, newly married, and had just found out I was pregnant with my first child. It was a happy and exciting time for us, filled with anticipation about the wonderful future that was ahead.
Over the years, the family grew and changed, adding first one child, then another. I always assumed that it would continue to grow as we added in-laws and grandchildren to the pages, a chronicle of the happy events in the life of a family. I envisioned that it would be an heirloom for them in the years to come, when they wanted to know how it all started, way back when.
However, life doesn't always follow the road map you drew in your mind when you were young, and things don't always work out the way you expect. For me, the expectation of growing old with someone I loved and who loved me back was replaced five years ago with a new reality, as divorce rent asunder the vows we had made so long ago.
As I have said before, divorce is a painful and difficult journey. It is filled with pitfalls as you try to sort through what to hang on to and what to throw aside for the new reality you now live. What fits a family of four can suddenly feel uncomfortable, the wrong shape or size for a family of three. You are forced to make changes in order to make the new you feel right again, but it's not always so obvious what they will be.
In the process of sorting out my life, I gave away a lot of things that were painful reminders of a past that no longer felt real to me, and which did not fit my new life as a single mom with teenagers. But I realized, even in the moment, that I had to save some of it, because my children would someday want to see a world in which their parents were happy together and loved one another, in order to validate their own lives.
I have not looked at my holiday book since 2004. That winter, I put it on a high shelf, where it has languished in anonymous forgetfulness. I didn't throw it away, which was my first angry inclination. It is, in fact, still there, accessible but unmoved, and not readily available. I don't know if I was afraid or angry or confused or just sad, but it was a painful reminder of all that I have lost, and I didn't want to step on that particular land mine if I didn't need to.
I considered tossing it and starting over, but that felt false to me. You cannot pretend the past away, and the 20 years we were married were a part of who I am, and who we are as a family. But neither have I added to the story - it remains stranded in time, like a capsule of someone else's life. The thread of the unfinished story is obviously broken, and it seemed wrong to document a family gone so far astray. So it continues to sit on a shelf unopened, a testament to how difficult it is to live happily ever after.
I suddenly realized a day or two ago that we have reached that far off final year in my holiday book. It is hard to imagine that 25 years are already history, but my 24 year old son makes clear that it is. I am curious now to peek at the past that will be revealed there. The child with whom I was then pregnant is now older than I was in that first picture, and what seemed impossibly far away in 1984 is now upon us, too soon.
And just as suddenly, I realized that I not only want to look at my book, but to finish it. The young person looking back at me has aged, but also grown up in unexpected ways. By ignoring that history, I am ignoring the very life experience that has made me who I am today.
In this holiday season of joy and rebirth, the renewal of my own family traditions is something more to celebrate. If you haven't kept your own records of your family's holiday traditions, start now! It's a fun way to preserve the present for those who will come in the future, and maybe even for yourself.
