'Tis The Season I've Been Dreading

Oh. Joy. The Holidays are upon us. Deck the halls with fear and trepidation.

Ever since the separation and divorce, I have targeted the holiday season as being a particularly bad one. Not only was I concerned with being alone at times but also that my daughters’ holidays would be ruined with the breakup of their family. I feared eating alone on Thanksgiving since the girls would be with their mother. I worried about feeling guilty about taking my daughters away from their mother on Christmas since they were scheduled to be with me. I despised the notion of decorating my new house because, really, what was the point? And wouldn’t that just make me feel worse?

I envisioned late November and all of December to be decorated with doom and gloom, not boughs of holly. I saw myself sitting lonely in my house longing for the times when I was with my wife and girls, decorating the Christmas tree and singing Christmas carols. In fact, I thought it would be so bad for me that I only took a very small amount of Christmas decorations when I moved out. I thought it would be better for the girls to have them all so they would have the decorations they are used to and I would probably not decorate anyway.

Thanksgiving was either going to be spent down at my parents in Texas or by myself. I thought back to when I was single and was alone for one Thanksgiving due mostly to not having the money to travel anywhere and all my friends having prior plans. I made a turkey dinner for myself. It was sad and pathetic and I assumed that's what I was in store for this year.

Then it occurred to me that none of the above HAD to happen. The type of holiday I was going to have was to be determined by me and how I approached it. If I approached it with the above thoughts, then yes, it would suck. I would be depressed and would be starting 2013 in the worst light possible. I had control over this and I decided I was going to do my best to prevent depression and disaster.

The first thing I did was see if I could spend Thanksgiving with the girls. This, of course, meant having dinner over at my ex-wife’s house. This was something we had discussed early on but I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it back then. However, both my ex and I are very mindful of our girls’ feelings about the divorce so we wanted the holidays to be as normal as they could be which meant both of their parents needed to be in the picture. So I am going to have dinner with my ex, my daughters and the people who used to be in my family. Will it be awkward? I suppose it could and probably still will be at least initially but again, the amount of awkwardness is controlled by me. If I want to be standoffish and not talk to anyone and bemoan to myself on how it used to be, then the awkward rate will be high. If I choose to have fun, enjoy the company and most importantly, be with my girls, then it doesn’t have to awkward at all.

And if it started to get that way, well, I’m bringing the wine. 

For Christmas, I am scheduled to have the girls the entire week of Christmas and since Christmas falls on a Tuesday this year that meant I could have them from the weekend before to the weekend after. My plans were to take the girls down to see their grandparents (my parents) and their aunts, uncle, and cousins. I knew my ex wouldn’t be happy about it but it was my right and I couldn’t be concerned with how she felt.

That didn’t last long.

Regardless of how I may have been distant during the last year or so of our marriage, I am generally a thoughtful guy. I try to take other people’s feelings into consideration and I began to do that not only with my ex-wife but with my girls. Separating them from their mom on the first Christmas after they no longer have two full time parents didn’t seem right. I discussed it with my ex and we decided that the girls would spend Christmas Eve with her and that I would come over early on Christmas morning, hopefully before the girls woke up, so both of us could enjoy watching the girls open their presents. Then, the girls and I would head for Texas.

As far as decorating my house, I am planning on doing something. Even if I wasn’t doing it for myself, I needed to do it for the girls. They are over here often and not having any decorations up for them would be unfair. It won’t be as extravagant as years prior, but they (and I) will know it’s the holiday season. I can’t put up a big tree as the only place where one would fit is in the basement or in the dining room. Neither of those spots is very visible so I am putting thought into what I will do. I do know that the outside decorations won’t be as big as before. I won’t be lining my entire roofline with lights but I will put some up. The bottom line is that I need to start building my own set of holiday decorations and new traditions for me and the girls as we move on to our next destination.

I'm sure next year will be different.  An entire year will have passed and who knows where I or my ex wife will be on our journeys but I suspect it won't be as easy to make sure we are all together.  I am totally expecting that and it will be a bridge we will cross when we get there.  For this year, however, focus must be on removing the sadness from the holidays.

It’s funny how I have done an almost complete 180 on my viewpoint for the holiday season and I’m glad I’m forcing myself to make this turnaround. It’s a known fact that the holidays cause depression rates to go up and I firmly believe that is something we can control…or at least I will be making the attempt. Do I think I’ll sail through this time of year without any sadness or feelings of forlornness? No, I’m sure I’ll have my moments, but if I don’t want to forever stain future holidays by letting the 2012 one suck beyond all manner of suckiness, I have to rely on myself to make it right. I think too often people in my situation let their depression get the better of them when it doesn't really have to. It’s not easy and I may find myself writing a blog about how my whole plan failed miserably. I hope that doesn’t happen and if I keep the right attitude, it won’t.

I write this post not only for myself but for others who may be in the same situation. Just because our lives may not be where we thought they would be this time of year doesn’t change the fact that the holidays are a special time. It’s a time for charity, happiness and seeing the world through the eyes of children. To miss out on that because you are basically feeling sorry for yourself is doing a disservice not only to you but to those around you. Forget about the heartache you’ve suffered and go look at Christmas lights. Abandon the thoughts of loneliness and go volunteer at a soup kitchen. I think you’ll find there are others in a lot worse shape than you. If your children aren’t around, “adopt” one at church or a local charity. Buy them presents and know you’ll be making their lives brighter. It’s not in what we do for ourselves that makes the holiday special, it’s what we do for others. I’m choosing to focus on my girls and not on me and I think that will make the season a merry one indeed.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find a Christmas tree I can display in my smallish living room.

 

The Meet

Ha!  Bet you thought this was about me meeting someone, didn’t you?  Nah.  It’s the noun form of “meet” as in gymnastics meet.

Last Sunday was the first official meet that my oldest daughter has participated in.  She’s been doing gymnastics for about two years now, I think.  She transitioned from dance to this.  I’ll admit to being a little bit sad when she danced her last recital.  She was so good and having so much fun, I was going to miss seeing them (my youngest is still in dance so there will still be recitals to see but she is also in gymnastics.  I imagine my time at recitals is limited).

My oldest has really taken to gymnastics. For the most part, she cartwheels more than she walks these days.  The recent shift in my destination made that a little difficult though.  She used to practice all the time in the house we used to live in but now when she tries it in my new living room, she ends up hitting the chair or the coach or her little sister.  Just not as much room unfortunately, but that’s what basements are for, right?

After a few years of just learning gymnastics and then moving up through the different class levels, she finally got to “team” and Sunday was her first official meet.    I had the girls last weekend and since the meet was two hours away, I decided to take them down the night before and we would stay at a hotel.  This alone would have been enough.  My girls love to stay at hotels.  Unfortunately, we got on the road later than I wanted so by the time we got there it was almost 7:30 and instead of maybe seeing a movie or going for a swim in the hotel pool, it was a choice between going out to eat or having room service.  That really wasn’t a question.  The girls screamed “Room service!” and thus I had one the worst meal of my life.   Well, the stuff I ordered was terrible.  The girls’ chicken tenders were delicious, though. 

We managed to get up, get breakfast and to the meet in time although we did cut it close.  My ex took the gymnast from the truck to get her hair done while her sister and I went to find a place to park.  We went to the go into the meet only to find that it cost $10.00 and I had no cash.  For some reason, the teen-ager manning the entrance with a lockable cash box and a hand stamp for the “ticket” didn’t take credit cards.  Imagine.  A quick dash to a nearby ATM (thankfully located in the strip mall we were in) and we made our way to the seats held by my ex (she had already been there for at least 20 minutes). 

The competition began and my heart swelled.  I believe there are few things in life more rewarding than seeing your own flesh and blood do something they love doing.   Of course, it took a while to actually see her do her thing.  These meets, as I now understand, are four events:  the beam, the floor, the bar and the vault.  The teams (there were two other gymnastic groups competing) split up into smaller groups and all four events went on at the same time, the groups rotating as they finished.  It wasn’t until my daughter started her first routine, the beam, that I noticed they were keeping individual scores.

I actually wish I hadn’t seen that.

You see, up until this point, all of my daughter’s gymnastic exhibitions and practice has all been for fun;   to see her do it; to watch her challenge herself to do a back walkover (not really sure exactly what that looks like but I remember the term).   Now she’s being judged on what she’s doing and I guess I should have realized that would happen at some point, I wasn’t ready for it.  Personally, I didn’t want to know her scores and I didn’t want to compare them to the others performing but I did.  You can’t help it.  Seeing how you stack up against others is at the core of competition, right?   

Midway through the competition, after my daughter did the routine she was in rotation for, I noticed the award cart off to the side.  It was loaded with medals and trophies.  I leaned over to my ex and asked “Is this one of those deals where no one is a loser and everyone gets a trophy?”  She smirked and said, “No. This isn’t like soccer.”  You see, when my girls did soccer, everyone got a trophy even though the team they played on came in last place in the standings.

I have never been a fan of the “everyone is a winner” mentality that seems to permeate over child sports these days.  Can’t let anyone know they failed, so give them a “participation award.”  I’ve never thought that was really healthy for the child as they then think they get rewarded all the time in life when that will rarely happen once they get older.

As the meet went on, I noticed that my daughter’s scores weren’t as high as the other girls and in some cases, toward the bottom.  It wasn’t that my daughter couldn’t do the things she was doing.  She can and she’s very good but she has a bit of a concentration problem.  She gets distracted easily and tends to mess up when she does...unless it's walking from event to event.  If they gave medals for proper composure as you move from one event to the other, she would have an armful of them.  Head up, arms back, tip-toeing as she walked with legs straight.  Is that an Olympic event yet?  I mean, they have ping pong, why not this? 

On the routines, though, she wasn’t as good as the others but this is her first event and she was having more fun than she was being serious about nailing the scores.  This was fine with me.  I would prefer her to have fun rather than stress out over getting a perfect score.  I’m sure that will come in time but for now, let her be a kid. 

Then the competition was over….

…and they started calling out the winners…

First of all, my ex and I realized we may have been wrong about this not being like soccer…especially when they brought out the stands for the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place winners…and then the 4^th, 5^th, 6^th, 7^th, 8^th, 9^th and 10^th place spots.  It was funny because the #1 spot was the highest stand and then they had descending levels for each one after, the smallest being 6^th place.  The rest were just markers on the floor.  I commented to my ex that I was surprised they didn’t go beneath the floor for the other levels. 

It was looking like more kids were going to get awards than we originally thought but as they started announcing and my daughter wasn’t up there on the stands, I started to get worried.  I was so proud of how she would cheer her teammates when they were called but I was worried how she was going to feel if she didn’t get something.  My ex and I would handle it as we should but to be frank, I didn’t want to face it.  I didn’t want my child to be upset because she didn’t get a medal and there were some girls who were getting 5 or 6. 

Finally, in the floor routine awards, she got a medal.  Sure it was for 10^th place but she was so happy and I was so happy for her.  You’d think she just got gold at the Summer Olympics she was beaming so much.  She really did have something to be proud of as I have since learned that the medals are based on a percentage of top scores.  Coming in 10th isn't so bad when you consider she was in the largest group. 

She also received a small trophy for participating like everyone else did but again; it was like she won it because of her perfect score in all four categories.  And to make things even better, her group won overall in the competition so a big trophy was awarded to them.

Ultimately what came out of this was the “parent” moment where at first I wanted my child to earn what she won and if she lost, she lost but then I quickly switched to “Oh, give her something.  She’s going to feel so sad if you don’t” mode.  Turned out she got both: one for her performance and one for participation so I didn’t have to worry about it but I did. 

We like to think we’re strong parents and will always do what is fair and right for our children but when faced with the possibility that your child may be sad or upset about something, all that goes out the window.  The trophy for us as parents is to see your kid smile and when you see it happen, it’s like you’re standing on the number 1 platform because you’re the winner. 

And let’s face it, if you’re children are happy, you ARE the winner.