Ornaments, Traditions, and New Year's wishes

Eighteen years ago when I sent a package for my son’s first Christmas, I included a keepsake ornament.  I bought two that year and it became a tradition each Christmas I would buy two ornaments, sending one and keeping the other.  There was only one requirement when selecting the perfect ornament – it had to have at least two characters (symbolizing both of his original parents).


This is a picture of that first ornament. 

Such detail and it captures the complete opposite of what happened that first year, Baby’s 1st Christmas.  Instead of him sleeping all snuggled in his crib while his daddy and look on in awe, wonder, and love – he is sleeping in some other crib and I am miles apart unable to sleep, tormented, and bawling my eyes out every night.

If the New Year could bring wishes, I wish everyone that thinks adoption is beautiful could see me now.  Not just see me with their naked eyeball, but to see me with their eyes closed, to sense and feel what I feel right now.  Do you imagine serenity and peacefulness like a freshly fallen snow?

It is January 8th.  Another Christmas has come and gone. 

Christmas is just such a painful time.  For others it may be a time for celebration, but for me it is a time of intense and deep sadness without my son.  I hate Christmas.  I hate decorating.  I hate getting the ornaments out.  Putting them away is even harder. 

I am at home by myself as I begin to take the ornaments off the tree.  The ornament boxes are laying out on the couch – in chronological order by year, waiting for me to put everything back into storage for another year. 

As usual I begin taking down each ornament, beginning with the current year and work back in time, until they are all carefully put it back in their boxes.  This year it is more painful than most.  I found myself pondering each ornament and thinking about why that ornament was selected.  I wondered if what he thought of it (if he even got it at all).  It stings.  Each ornament hurt more than the prior one so I quickly removed them all at once from the tree. 

Every ornament symbolizes a year of separation – not just a separation of measured distance or periods marked by the calendar, but a separation of our relationship growing further and further apart.  I don’t know if or when that separation will ever come to an end.

My heart is crushed and pained at how much I miss him, pierced to know I’ve wounded him. 
Once again, this is all there is ‘of’ my son.

Lifeless eyes painted on cold unmoving plastic, and silence.

 If the New Year could bring wishes
I wish everyone could see this adoption pain