This year I chose to work Christmas, and I didn't come off too badly. I work Christmas evening but not Christmas Day, and I thought that was very fair. After twenty years of working shifts, I have had my share of Christmases off while I was able to choose to work New Years. This year would be the third Christmas since my separation, and my daughter would be with her dad. I have had two years now to see how his side of the family would react, and I knew I would be spending it alone. We have an agreement though, for major holidays, that some part of it is spent with both parents, which usually works. It's usually really last minute though, and my shifts are always preplanned and his family is always last minute, so it's luck of the draw if it works out. I have learned to be flexible, and fortunately my sometimes quite inflexible daughter has been incredible in being flexible too.
This time, unlike last year, no family would be coming my way. This has nearly always been the case. I spent Christmas a lot of different ways over the years. I went home for a while, but it's hard to go home after a while when it never goes the other way. I worked quite a few. I spent one memorable Christmas with cousins in Ontario which ended abruptly when I found out with a desperate message on my answering machine that I was late for my shift and 6 hours away, somehow miscounting the days with families celebrating in different households over several dates!
The first year I was separated, I worked since I didn't have my daughter. She came over with her dad Christmas evening. I made supper and he read The Night Before Christmas. Christmas day, they got up, did stockings and opened gifts and then came over to my place. I thought they would wait for presents, but I didn't have many anyway for me, so it made no difference to my daughter. At the time, her dad didn't have a car, so I drove her and her dad to Christmas with her grandparents and then off to work. It was strange. For 13 years I had celebrated with this family. I had bought any gifts, or made any parts of the meal, or brought the wine. But then it was over. As if, after all that time, I was only ever tied to them through my husband. As if we had no other relationship.
The second year I was separated, I had Christmas off and I had my daughter, and my brother came, and it was wonderful. For the first time in 20 years since I moved to this province, I could make treats that he also would identify as nostalgic. He brought some old standbys too. We made snowmen and skied. It was the best and most genuine Christmas I had ever had in Montreal!
Again, and as expected it was weird with her dad. But despite it being a one way street, Christmas is not the time of exclusion, at least not for me. So I invited his family, who said an enthusiatic, sure! but they only stayed awkwardly on the couch for a few minutes for the sake of a dear aunt who hadn't been briefed on the exclusions they were invoking when they picked him up. They didn't stay after all. My daughter's dad was invited, but he also didn't stay for the meal he was invited to, and also didn't say so until he abruptly got picked up before we started the meal. He set up the stockings at his house before Christmas and explained Santa wasn't real, and exchanged gifts before Christmas, as if to lessen what I had to offer. But these things have to be let go, so that my daughter can celebrate, wherever she goes.
This year, I found a used copy of O. Henry's book of short stories, and for the first time I read my favorite Christmas story to my daughter, The Gift of the Magi. I tried not to embarrass myself with tears, but it is just so moving! These kinds of sacrifices are not seen in this age of credit cards. But they were made with such love.
This story meant a lot more to me tonight.
A few weeks ago, I started thinking about the holidays. I asked my daughter's dad what days he worked the week he had her, I found out that both of us were working the week after Christmas. I was off for the thursday and friday, and he would get Christmas day off, but there was no doubt that Boxing day in the merchandise business was going to be a workday. I offered a colleague to do his Christmas day shift, so that I could be with my daughter while her dad worked. This meant that I would leave work at 1am and return at 8, and that for the first time in a long time, I would work both Christmas evening and day, but for me it was worth the sacrifice. I told her dad that I was able to switch, so that he wouldn't have to worry about it. He got his grandparents to agree to have her the day after. My daughter wouldn't have to worry about anything. She was taken care of for the week. I would have a little less sleep but would be able to spend time with her eventually, after she spent the holidays with her Dad's family.
Then her dad called tonight. Don't worry he says. I got it switched. I don't work Boxing Day anymore. I felt a familiar pang that Jim and Della felt. Really? I said, incredulous. I had Christmas day off, with an understanding that I would see my daughter on that day, and now am working both evening and day, with little sleep, not to make sure she is taken care of but for no benefit to anyone.
I hope one day she understands what lengths I have gone to to take care of her. I hope she sees what I would do, even if what I do is undone and futile.
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