A Christmas Miracle
The moments I finally didn’t miss.
A Christmas miracle.
Turns out it wasn’t just me.
A quiet, secret hope that something, anything, would show up and make it all better.
Sometimes I tied that hope to a project or a business deal that kept popping back up.
Sometimes it was completely unrealistic.
Lottery-level desperation.
Just give me a miracle.
This second draft of the book has been its own kind of gift.
I’ve been walking backward through my story with a perspective I didn’t have the first time.
And what I keep finding is that everything comes in pairs now.
If I’m going to be honest about this…usually a harsh truth about me or my circumstance.
Then I might as well be honest about that…the part that was never actually mine to carry, despite the guilt, shame, or debt I took on.
Drinking… and the truth about how destructive it really was.
My first marriage… and what was taken from me on both sides of it.
The moments life knocked me flat… and the moments I chose to stand back up.
Beaten and battered.
Sometimes literally.
Sometimes figuratively.
As a kid.
As a teenager.
As an adult.
And in all of that…unbelievable gifts.
Miracles.
I’ve wanted a motorized big wheel.
The drifting kind.
For years.
A stupid little dream that always made me laugh.
Santa still hasn’t delivered.
Last year, I was pressed from every direction.
Standing up again, trying to reclaim pieces of myself I’d abandoned.
I ordered a custom mountain bike…long lead time, safe space, something to look forward to.
And then the timeline shrunk.
The bike was ready.
I wasn’t.
I needed more time.
What I got was more than time.
A Christmas miracle.
Maybe that’s what’s hitting me this year.
Not gifts, but the missed moments.
The holidays were always the strangest spot for me.
They never made sense.
They never mattered.
Not holidays, not birthdays, not anniversaries.
Ang is the exact opposite.
Of course she is.
It starts every year at the pumpkin patch, the real one, a farm with vines and dirt and rows of tangled pumpkins.
Finding five.
Mom gets two…sometimes three.
Tradition.
Thanksgiving.
Last year it was the week before…thirteen people packed into our house for days.
Binge-watching Netflix.
Football.
Cooking.
Eating.
Dancing on Nintendo.
Laughter.
Love.
Thanksgiving Day.
Dinner at Chart House.
Mason and Mila the only kids in the whole restaurant.
Mason finally getting the turkey he’d been asking for all day.
Just the four of us.
Then the Christmas tree farm.
Even the year Mason was born…barely weeks old.
We were still there on opening weekend, cutting down our own tree.
One year the tree was so big I had to carve the back of it into the shape of the corner so it would fit.
The smell of pine taking over the whole house.
The damn elves.
Christmas Eve dinner.
Together. Laughing. Being Silly.
I missed all of this for so long.
And maybe that’s the miracle.
Not something showing up to fix it all…
but finally being awake for it.
Finally being here.