Trade-offs

I am afraid I will come to regret it, but I stood my ground on Christmas this year. Let me tell you some of the back story to understand why I did what I did. When I was a little girl, I lived with my mom, dad and brother in Columbus, Ohio. My parents would drive to see my grandparents almost every weekend. They lived in a tiny town about 2 hours away. My dad never really knew his father and his mother was elderly and moved to Ohio from California in the late 1970's. I don't know if we went along with driving to see his wife's parents so often because he had almost no family of his own, or because he loved his wife and wanted to please her, or what. My brother and I loved going because our grandparents were indulgent and fun and we loved getting away from the city to the "country".

My dad and mom divorced when I was 12. My mom tried to make it as a single mom in the 1970's in the big city for a while, but it didn't take long before she sold our house in the comfy Columbus suburb we lived in and moved my brother and me to a tiny house she bought in a town close to her parents, who by then had moved to a home they had built on their farm. My grandma always owned at least 5 horses and the farm had a large barn, creeks running through it, etc....and we loved to be there. Although the move back there was disruptive to me as a junior high kid, I managed to settle in to the tiny town with the less-than-friendly people who didn't "get" me and didn't want to even try.

Through all of this, we spent major holidays with my grandparents. My grandma is a very formidable person. She worked outside of the home at a time when most women didn't. Whatever she did, she did well. For instance, she attended secretarial college in order to get a better job after finishing high school. When she graduated from the program, she was the fastest typist and shorthand person they'd ever had. She could type 180 words per minute on a manual typewriter. She went on to work her way up from the secretarial pool of the local General Electric factory to being in charge of the human resources department. During most of my childhood, she was a highly regarded woman in the community. She knew everyone, and they knew her. They knew she was the way to a good factory job that could get you set up for life. She knew who the brothers and uncles and cousins were of almost everyone in the small community where the plant was based.

All this to say, that it was easy to understand how her wishes became our wishes. We wanted to be with her and my grandpa. The ladies of her family had a tradition I loved where they all went out for lunch the day before Christmas. I couldn't wait until I was old enough to be allowed to join them. They also had a big family gathering of my grandma, her two sisters and her brother, and all of their families. Over the years, this grew to mean children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren. It was fun to be around my grandma's sisters, whom I called my Aunts-Aunt Jane and Auntie Mabel. My mom was an only child and I longed for lots of cousins and family, and Jane and Mabel never disappointed me. They loved me (and still do) as though I was their first-generation niece and not a grandniece.

I remember as we grew older that my dad rebelled at times about going to Fresno for Christmas. He wanted to have the holiday in his own home. But other than one year that I can remember, every year we traipsed off to Ruthie's for Christmas. Even once we lived near there, we would go to their house for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. After I went away to college, I still would go "home" for the holidays and spend them with my grandparents. When I married John, he knew part of the deal was that I spent Christmas with my elderly grandparents.

This was all fine and dandy until we started having kids. The first Christmas, with Abby, wasn't so bad. We loaded up all of our gifts for her and for everyone else, plopped her in her car seat, and off we went. Then we returned home 2 or 3 days later with a huge load of toys and baby equipment in our car. It was almost impossible to fit it all in, especially since by then we had 2 dogs that went with us to the farm. But I couldn't imagine not being with Ruthie and Poppie for Christmas. It got a lot harder when Anna came along. Schlepping two kids, two dogs, two grown-ups and all of the gifts was HARD. When Anna got old enough to start knowing about Santa, we felt we had no choice but to do all of our "Christmas" in one place. It was too hard to explain to a three year old why Santa might come to two different houses. Finally, though, it got to be too much. We just couldn't haul everything back and forth, so we started having Christmas Day with my grandparents, then coming back to our home and having Christmas on New Year's Eve with my dad and stepmom and sometimes John's parents if they would come. (Usually his parents would just see us for a nice dinner the day after Christmas or whatever. We didn't feel guilty because they had each other and seemed to really understand that we were going to be with my family for "THE DAY".)

For a couple of years, we would tell Anna that Santa knew to take some of her things to one house AND to the other because he was magic. She bought it, but it made me sad to have her out feeding the reindeer on the wrong day or being confused because Santa came to two places. My grandpa, Carl, died on December 7th, 2004. It was a tough Christmas that year because my dad was beginning what was to become an extremely serious and lengthy illness that kept him in the hospital for over 8 months. Between worrying about my dad, who lay near death in the hospital, and my grandma, who was grieving her partner of almost 65 years, it made me want to be with her even more for the holiday, because I knew the main thing that made her happy was to see my children, happily opening their gifts and playing and showing that life does go on.

Last year, when Ian was born on the 6th of December, we made it clear we weren't traveling over there for the holiday. He was too small, and it was too overwhelming to think of hauling all of us and our things over there. That feeling has persisted for this whole year. Now that the number of my family outnumbers the beds and couches of her home, we have never gone back to spend the night. It's terribly uncomfortable and difficult to travel, especially with Abby.

So, a few months ago, my mom began feeling me out for what we'd do for Christmas this year. I didn't want to go spend the night at all, but most especially not on Christmas. I wanted to have the holiday in OUR home, with OUR tree, and OUR beds, and OUR fireplace. But oh, I felt so selfish! My grandma is now 88 years old. She is, as the parlance goes, "failing fast". She is tired-of life, of trying, of getting up every morning. She is DONE and wants to die. She's in terrible pain all the time from arthritis and other ailments. This was probably her last Christmas. I felt that the celebrations would be the same, though, no matter what DAY we held them. I stuck to my guns.

We did end up going to her house and spending not one, but two nights thanks to an ice storm the day we were to come home. (Last Tuesday.) We had a relaxed "holiday". My Aunt Jane, who never wanted or had children of her own, was able to be with us our whole "Christmas" day. She saw all of the gifts opened by the little ones. Usually that doesn't happen because she whizzes off to see all of the cousins and their babies too. So to some extent, it was a relaxed and happy holiday. Well, as relaxed as any time ever is when you have three kids who don't understand that their great-grandma doesn't feel good and can't (fill in the blank of whatever a kid might need or want) for you. Plus my niece and her three children were there the whole time too-so we had six kids plus 6 adults there most of the time. It was crazy, but the kids loved it. Ian charmed everyone with his hesitant, toddling steps across the family room and his insistent pointing and saying "Tee!" at the tree. Anna was excellent with her cousins and played with them and kept them busy for us, plus holding the baby for hours at a time. Abby was hard to cope with, but then when isn't she? She begged to "go home" over and over and over. And over. We all tried to ignore her as much as we could when it became clear that we weren't going to be able to make her understand that we weren't going home YET.

So, we came home on Christmas Eve day. We didn't have time to do all that we needed to get done since we spent an extra day at Ruthie's due to the ice storm, but still, we were home. Anna went to church with her Grandma Claire, we left out cookies and milk for Santa and fed his reindeer, the whole deal. It was so nice. The next morning was fun. It was just us, which felt "small" to me after our big family Christmases with Ruthie, but it was nice. We opened our gifts and enjoyed watching Ian play with the boxes and paper more than the presents themselves. We tried, and failed, to get Abby to open her gifts. (They are still wrapped and under the tree because she doesn't want to open them and we don't want to make her open them....it feels wrong to force someone to open a gift, somehow.) Anna has had her nose buried in her Nintendo DS games, which apparently were a huge hit.

And I sit here with tears in my eyes wondering if I did the right thing. This probably was Ruthie's last Christmas. She's giving up on life, and I can see it draining out of her right before my eyes. Should I have just given in and gone there on THE DAY? After all, if it's Christmas whenever you make it, can't that be turned around on us too? Couldn't OUR Christmas have been whatever day we made it? I should've just gone back there one more time and made an old lady happy. She acted happy and like she had a good time with us. She went to my mom's house and watched my niece's little girls open all their gifts on Christmas morning. But then she went back to her quiet, lonely house in the middle of nowhere and sat alone. Probably sad, and lonely.

The ultimate trade-off. I got Christmas in my home, as I wished. But at what price?