Her birthday comes and goes and, for a moment, I am allowed a quick breath.

And then the holidays slam into me — full force with no mercy.

Today she won’t bake cookies with us. Tomorrow, she won’t wrap presents with the boys while my husband is at work. On Saturday, she won’t listen to bad words as A Christmas Story plays all day in the background. She won’t sit down to our table as we attempt our first family turkey. She won’t go to church with us. She won’t sing “Silent Night” beside me. She won’t unwrap jammies, put out cookies and milk, or listen to The Firefighter’s Night Before Christmas by the light of the tree. On Christmas morning, only two little children will crawl into our bed, open the last envelope and read the story of Jesus before rushing off to open their presents.

She’ll be with her family, doing her family things — all of which are so very similar. She will, in essence, be doing the same things at the same times. But it is, obviously, not the same. For any of us. Though — though — we have never known any different. It is the same at is always has been, ever will be.

It will still be Christmas. As always. There will still be joy and love and happiness and cheer — and annoyance with extended relatives and the other “junk” the comes along with a family holiday. It is still Christmas, both here and there. We celebrate. Separately. With those we love. Apart from those we love. It is what happens at Christmas tables the world around, touched by adoption or not. It is, as they say, what it is.

I find myself accepting that — that I am not alone in the happy nor in the missing. These are not new or different emotions. There is a sameness that runs through most every family, for differing or same reasons. Missing someone at Christmas is not a singular experience. Though, knowing how it tugs sometimes, I don’t really like knowing that others feel that same sense of loss or sadness. I want to fix it for them. For me. For all of us.

I hope — I pray — that maybe this year, my friends and family and readers and beyond might find a bit more joy than sadness. A bit more light than darkness. It’s really not a bad thing to hope for, I believe.

The Difference Is The Same at Christmas is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.

The calendar page falls, and so do I, into the cold, hard month of December.

Yes, the tree is decorated. The Christmas music plays when we enter too warm, cinnamon-scented stores to spend money on those we love — and some that we don’t. I’ll put on my new Christmas themed glasses. I’ll wear red and green. I’ll wrap presents, bake cookies, make teacher gifts. I’ll tick our way down to Christmas Day with the boys via our Advent activities and their pure, unabashed joy. I will make sure everyone has the month that they are supposed to have — the month that they deserve to have; it’s a special season. I wouldn’t take that away from my family.

I’ll do what I’m supposed to do.

But with each step, I will be aware of everything I have lost.

It’s a hard balance, the highest of holiday highs with the lowest of life lows. Balance is hard with anything, I suppose. I have struggled with the month of December every year since I placed the Munchkin for adoption at birth. Christmas does make me happy. The loss of my daughter does make me sad. Holding the two opposing realities in separate hands with the weight of everything else I am told I have to accomplish this month on my shoulders leaves me so bogged down with a myriad of emotions.

There’s the sadness that’s more than just unhappiness; it’s a deep, searing, depressed emptiness that simply can’t be ignored this month. Other months it stays below the surface enough that I’m able to function — to acknowledge it but still leave room to feel the other things both related to our adoption relationship and the rest of my life. In December, there’s just no other room. The sadness bubbles up through the thin icy layer and breaks through to the surface of my soul, my heart, my face. I don’t wear the sadness on my sleeve any other time of year, but it sits next to the Christmas pin on my jacket. They go together.

There’s the guilt that I feel this way at all. Shouldn’t I be happy? I have an amazing relationship with my daughter, my daughter’s mom, their family. I see her. I know her. My children know her. My husband knows her. They all love her so dearly. And then we get to add in the guilt that I feel as though I am somehow shorting my own children out of the pure joy of the season because, even with the brave face, there are moments in December when I am lost, looking out the window at would could have been, not entirely present. They deserve better; they deserve more.

There’s the anger that seeps in, which only serves to anger me more. Actually, during the last visit I had with the Munchkin and her family, I got irrationally angry with Munchkin’s birth father for not dealing with his own emotions enough to handle visits and thus feel the way it feels to leave a visit. Anger at him hits its highest peak in December as memories of phone calls eight Decembers ago come back into my mind and flash by like bad movie scenes. I feel angry with myself for feeling any anger with him as I have forgiven him. But the memory of talking to him in my apartment, alone, after she was born… it chokes me. I can still feel my clenched fists and jaw, that lump in my throat, that burning in the deepest center of my core. So, really, while I have memories about how angry I was with him, the anger really stays with me this month. That I can’t forget. That even though I have forgiven, the memories still come and haunt and poke and prod and shove me into the pit of despair.

And the truth is that I just miss my daughter so much in December for so many reasons. Her birthday. Christmas. All of the memories we simply aren’t making together. It’s hard. It hurts.

The duality of December — the unbelievably happy with the unbelievably sad — leaves me feeling torn. Who am I? How do I do this? How do I keep on doing this for the rest of my life? How do I be the best mom, the best birth mother, the best wife, the best employee, the best daughter, the best friend, the best of who I know I can be — when I don’t even know who I am or how I am supposed to be this month?

All of the deep, introspective self-questioning aside, the fact remains that I have to find some way to balance that duality. There is no other option. Too many people depend on me this time of year to just sit and stare at her ornament on the tree. I need to be present. I need to participate. I need to be who I need to be right now. And so, I start the eighth December of desperately seeking a balance that works for everyone else.

Maybe some year the balance will work for me to, but I just don’t have the time to worry about me right now.

Oh, Hey December. Fancy Meeting You Here. is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.

I was ten kinds of verklempt during the fireworks display at our local city park last night. To be honest, I’m usually kind of weepy on the 4th of July. Well, to be totally honest, I am kind of weepy any time I hear the National Anthem or “God Bless the USA.” It’s just who I am, how I was raised. And, let’s face it: I’m a weepy girl.

We were spending the evening with good friends. The same friends who recently endured an awful loss. I was watching our friend hold his eight-year-old on his lap and was just overcome with this wall of grief that this was their first holiday without his wife, her mom. I sat behind everyone, snapping away with my camera, so no one saw me wipe tears from my eyes as I imagined what that must feel like.

And then the thoughts of their overwhelming and still-raw loss started to poke at other parts of my soul.

Our open adoption affords us some great time together, but as scheduling and other family loyalties don’t grant much holiday time together. I’ve come to accept that over the years. Christmas is hard, but I’m often distracted by the busy life of my immediate family on that day. This was the first year that I really felt the pang of missing my daughter on the 4th. Or, perhaps, it’s really always been there but was exacerbated by the visual representation of loss that my friend and his daughter presented as we sat in the dark.

I don’t even know if the Munchkin likes fireworks.

This is the first year that I was free to snap photos of fireworks, finally not wrangling a child on my lap who was holding his hands over his ears. They were enthralled. Not silent; no, very talkative. But enthralled. Earlier in the day, in fact, my oldest son wanted to know the science and technical aspects of setting of fireworks. (He has also asked for a “science kit” for his birthday. He befuddles me.) Would she have sat next to them and ooh-ed and ahh-ed? Would she have stood up and pointed? Would her hair have blown in the light breeze that blew the smoke off to the opposite side of the city that we live on? Would she have glanced back at me, as my oldest son did, with a grin that read, “Thank you for letting me stay up so late and experience the awesome that is this night”…?

I thought of these things as the booms of the fireworks shook my feet, my heart. I felt them in my ears, in my stomach, in my chest. Her absence is a part of these joyous occasions. It doesn’t ruin them for me; I had a wonderful evening, even with the “bathroom incident” and the bike that ran into my oldest son. But that absence always gives me pause, makes me wonder what it would be like if things were different. I recognize that playing “what if” is not productive, but the heart wanders where it wants and all too often I simply miss my daughter.

We’ll be seeing her soon as another visit looms. I’ll ask her if she likes fireworks. If the kids are out playing in the dusk and the breeze catches her hair, my throat will catch. I’ll store it away with the many memories that I am grateful for and play it back someday… maybe next year on the 4th of July.

Fireworks and Loss is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.

I always had fancy dresses to wear on Christmas Eve. It’s what our family did. I can recall my dresses now in vivid color; a long marching line of plaids, with the random solid thrown in every few years. Mostly taffeta and velvet. Mostly red and green. Mostly made by my grandmother.

I can still feel the stiff taffeta, the lines of the plaid running this way and that under my fingertips. I can still hear the scritchy-scratch of the material as I walked into our church for Christmas Eve service, taking my candle and following my family to our pew. The old lady and her husband who sat behind us, both dead now, would go on and on about my dress, even more so if Grandma piped up that she had made it herself. I would smile politely; manners were important in our family. At the end of service, as we sang “Silent Night” in the darkened sanctuary with our candles gleaming, I would play with the hot wax and hope it didn’t ruin my dress.

Not because I loved the dresses. I didn’t. I mostly hated them. Don’t get me wrong. Looking back at those dresses now, I was a lucky, lucky girl. Whether they were purchased in a store or made with love by my paternal Grandma, they were stunning pieces of work. Not one girl my age had dresses like I did for Christmas Eve. Not a one.

And that’s what I hated.

I didn’t want to stick out. I didn’t want to be different. I wanted something slinky and clingy. I wanted something black and plain. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be like everyone else. And there I was in this velvet and taffeta get up, smiling and saying thank you, and wishing I was wearing a burlap sack. I look back at those moments and wish future me could have whispered in my ear or shown up in the style of The Time Traverler’s Wife and told me that some girls were jealous of my dresses, even if they made fun of them. And, more importantly, someday I would long for plaid taffeta dresses but have no where to wear them.

And no one to dress them in.

Christmas dresses are in every store I walk through right now. A large majority of them are plaid, as something about Christmas brings out the plaid in designers. I saw one recently that was gorgeous. It had a mainly gold base and the plaids were a deep burgundy, a nice rose and a purple. There as a bow as there’s always a bow with these dresses. I stood and touched the material; that same stiff material with the threads racing this way and that brought back this memory.

I remember one dress in particular. It was actually a skirt, red and green and gold plaid, hitting somewhere mid-calf, paired with a white button up shirt that had gold embroidery on the collar. Grandma had gotten a new sewing machine. The shirt was a compromise. I hated it, but I wore it as I loved my Grandma so dearly. But the skirt, despite the fact that it was noisy and made me stick out like a sore thumb, nosily made its way into my heart. It was the last Christmas dress/skirt/outfit my Grandma ever made for me. I remember thinking the next year that someday I would pass on that skirt to my daughter.

I don’t know what became of that skirt. Some of my dresses — there were more than just Christmas dresses — were passed on to younger cousins. Others were farmed out to females in the area who needed nice dresses. I think of that skirt when I pass the plaid dresses in the stores. I know the Munchkin would hate my old dresses. She is a fashionista. She’d likely hate a new plaid dress, too. So, I don’t buy them.

I just touch them, gently, in the stores, memories racing through my fingertips along with the realization that our family line of plaid dresses has come to its end.

Plaid Dresses is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.

It’s hanging again. Her ornament. It faces my spot on the couch where I do most of my work day in and day out. It hangs at just about eye view. The silver shininess of the ornament catches my eye when I glance out the window to look at the snow that continues to layer itself on our apple tree outside.

I can’t imagine not having her ornament on our tree.

It’s something little. To most people it might even register as insignificant. It isn’t Earth-shattering or all that big and bold. It’s just an ornament on a Christmas tree. Right?

It still means so much more to me.

I bought it on clearance in late Spring after her first Christmas. I was meandering around Hallmark, looking for things which have long since been forgotten. I noticed that the ornaments were 75% off the lowest marked price so I took a look. One “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament from 2003 was sitting in the pile. Just one. I bought it without thinking.

I didn’t hang it in 2004.

I was just coming out from under the dark veil of denial of the first year of adoption. While our relationship was fine, I was beginning to feel things that I didn’t quite understand. In fact, some of the things I was feeling felt wrong. Was I allowed to regret things? Was I allowed to miss her so deeply, so viscerally? Was I allowed to think of “what if” and ask why? I didn’t know. The thoughts scared me. They overwhelmed me. And so acting like any other reasonable adult, I ignored them just as I ignored the ornament when I pulled the decorations out to deck the halls that year. I ignored what that meant.

I don’t think I hung it up in 2005 either. In fact, I know I didn’t. My heart was heavy with the realization of all I had lost as I cradled my newborn oldest son in my arms. I couldn’t begin to comprehend what hanging her ornament or lacking to do so meant for me. I couldn’t even comprehend at that time how the relinquishment of my firstborn was going to forever affect how I parented the children under my roof. I wasn’t in denial that year. I was clueless as to everything that placing a child had done to my soul.

Come 2006, after completing almost a full year of therapy, I pulled out the box and opened it for the first time. Turns out that the little star that said “Baby’s First” wasn’t properly attached to the ornament and fell off. I hung it that year, the first in our new home, without the star. It was a step. A baby step. But a step.

In 2007, I fastened the star to the ornament with some fishing line, courtesy of my nature loving husband. And every year since, it has been proudly displayed on our tree.

Maybe the story of how an ornament hangs on our tree means nothing to you. It says volumes about my healing. I was once unable to even consider hanging up something that put my heart on the line, my story on a tree, visible to all who entered our home. It has taken me years to get to a point where I not only need to hang it up like the rest of our ornaments but I am proud to do so. That ornament? Is a silver, shiny, dangling representation of my daughter, what she means in my life and what I have been through to keep her in my life. It’s not just an ornamental decoration to me.

This ornament and its reflection, both visual on the ornament and here in words, represent this journey I have endured and will continue to endure for years to come.

Ornamental Reflection is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.

Part of Open Adoption Roundtable 11.

The holidays are hard for me to even bother considering right now, this week, as the Munchkin’s birthday looms heavy on the horizon. These two topics, birthdays and holidays, are so deeply twined together in my psyche that I wonder if I can fully separate them or, really, if I ever want to do such a thing.

The Munchkin was due on Christmas Eve. I worked so hard to keep her safe and healthy until 38 weeks, 2 days when she was delivered at a healthy 7 pounds, 9 ounces. It snowed that night. The maternity ward was decorated for Christmas. The first pictures I received of the Munchkin were of her with her new family, celebrating both her birth and the holidays. No, I don’t think I can separate the holidays from her birthday.

I sing every Christmas Eve at our church. It’s part of who I am. It’s what I do. I don’t know why as the added stress always ends up making me sick by Christmas Eve, thus making my voice sound hoarse. But I do it. I’ve been practicing my song this week. I can’t sing the last verse. Or, rather, I can’t sing the last verse without tears coming to my eyes and my heart doing a strange contraction-explosion thing. I’m singing “A Baby Changes Everything,” recorded by Faith Hill. (I am not pretending to be Faith Hill. Ever.) If you are not familiar with the song, you should have a listen.

(Weirdly, I’m wearing red and black on Christmas Eve. I’ve never watched this video. Weird.)

The song itself concludes with this beautiful gem:

“My whole life was turned around
I once was lost but now I’m found
A baby changes everything…
A baby changes everything.”

And I plan to sing this on what was her due date, six years later. Sometimes I sign myself up for these really spectacular challenges of faith and peace and healing, don’t I? Nothing like forcing myself into a public place and putting my heart out there for all the world to see. I didn’t even really understand all I was signing up for when I chose this particular song. It fit my range. It was Christmas-y. The lyrics were pretty. Then I began practicing. Then I began crying. Such is my life, I think.

So, you see, I can’t really separate the holidays from her birthday. I don’t think I’m meant to when I really think about it deeply. My whole life was turned around. A baby did change everything. In so many ways. In so many glorious, challenging, heart-breaking, encouraging, devastating, uplifting ways. She was my own little Christmas miracle, delivered to me a little bit early. She will always remain that in my heart.

And she cries…

Open Adoption Roundtable 11: Holidays is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.

I asked the Munchkin what she got for Christmas.

“Too much.”

From the looks of pictures and the stories, she had a similar (but girlier) Christmas to ours. Filled with family and presents and laughter. It is, of course, what I wanted for her when choosing adoption. A family to love her for everything that she is.

I dealt with missing her better this year than in years past. I think that part of it was because we were so busy with family things on our end, traveling to and from my husband’s various family members’ houses. By the time we got home, put boys in bed and cleaned up the toysplosion, I was suddenly hit with the realization that I didn’t call her. I believe this is the first year that I didn’t call in the morning or afternoon. But I got to talk to her the next day. Still, that nagging guilt sits there. I’ll remember next Christmas Day.

I’m thinking, now, about three years ago when she and her family arrived to meet newborn BigBrother for the first time. It was a crazy New Years Eve and Day that year with newborn BigBrother and newborn JD and a Munchkin and four of us adults in our (then) two bedroom apartment. But we made it work somehow. And now I’m looking forward to the Munchkin finally meeting LittleBrother. So much so that I can’t even properly put words to it.

My Christmas has just reminded me how blessed we truly are. In so many ways.

Too Much is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.

I’m stretched too thin. I’m over-committed. And I’m exhausted. Emotionally I am overwhelmed and need to find an outlet for properly dealing with those emotions. And, no, they’re not even all bad emotions! In fact, those joyous ones are so big and equally overwhelming that I just don’t have room for every emotion I’m feeling right now.

My life is so full. I have an upcoming concert. I’m singing a solo on Christmas Eve at church again. I’m working every Sunday and Wednesday in our church nursery. I’m writing and writing and writing. I’m giving away lots of stuff. I’m shopping. I’m wrapping (and I hate wrapping). I’m getting presents out on time. I’m planning for my youngest’s party tomorrow. I’ll be taking both boys with me to pick up a HUGE cake. By myself. I’m doing all of this. And more. I’m going going going. I can’t stop.

And then there are the emotions.

My boys are so amazing. But growing too quickly. And the Munchkin is equally amazing. And my anniversary is coming up. And her birthday. And Christmas. And there are issues within my nuclear family (my parents) and extended family (others) that are too big for me to even comprehend. And there’s the loss of my grandfather weighing on me as we near the holidays. And other losses. And friends dealing with loss. And I don’t have time to stop and say how I feel for sure because it changes so quickly.

How are we a day and a half away from December? Where has this year gone? What will next year bring? Will I have time to slow down a little bit? Will I get a little time for myself? Will life always be this fast-paced? Do I need to move to a quiet island? Or would I be like this even then? Is this just me? Or is this version of me a product of a fast-paced life dictated by society?

I don’t know. But I took my first nap in months and months yesterday. And, gosh, it felt good to slow down and rest for an hour. Maybe I just need more naps.

What An Overwhelming Time of Year is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.

Do you know anyone who says, “I’m thankful, but…”

Well, if you’re reading this, you do. I’m good at that, I really, really am. I’m thankful for this house but I wish it was bigger. I’m thankful for my oldest son but I wish his ears worked better. I’m thankful for my youngest son but I wish he wasn’t teething and, as such, biting. I’m thankful for my Husband but if he gets called out on one more holiday to fight a fire, I’m going to scream!

The buts. They’re always around, aren’t they?

I don’t want to feel like that this Thanksgiving. Especially not in relation to my children; any of them, all of them. It’s been a hard year in some respects. I want to be truly thankful, if not everyday, at least today. I can go back to but-ing tomorrow. Today?

I am thankful for my daughter and her spirit. I am thankful for her hair, for her eyes. I am thankful for her intelligence. I am thankful for her Mom and her amazing ability as a parent. I am thankful for her grandparents in so many ways. I am thankful for my own boys and their laughter, their joy. I am thankful for my Husband for not only supporting us but loving us, unconditionally. I am thankful for all of my internet friends who have taught me so much over the past few years; about adoption, about parenting and about learning to love myself.

Today I am thankful. Without the buts.

Thanks with No Buts is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.

I’m singing on the Munchkin’s birthday this year. A few months back I auditioned for and made the local singing group. MyTown Singers, called The Singers for short, has been a blast for me. I haven’t really made a lot of friends as I’m quiet in such a large group situation but I’ve been friendly with new people which is a huge step for me. As per usual, I’m one of the younger ones in the group as I tend to do “old people things” but, alas, I enjoy being a breath of fresh air. Or something.

The concert, of course, is on the Munchkin’s birthday. (And the day following.) When I first saw that, I figured it would be a good thing. It would keep my mind busy and my body as well. I would have less time to think and dwell. I’ve always tried to be busy on birthdays that I could not physically be with my daughter.

But I’m starting to second guess myself. You know, as is my nature.

We’re singing a song. It was written by Matthew West and performed by Mandisa. And it’s called “Christmas Makes Me Cry.” While I didn’t get the solo in the song (because who gives the solo to the new girl?), I still can’t manage to listen or get through it without being overcome by emotion.

Maybe it’s because the song talks about loved ones lost and I’m still processing the first-ever loss of a grandparent just this past September. Maybe it’s because it talks of “soldiers across the sea” and I think of my friend’s brother who died in 2006. Maybe it is because the Virgin Birth does get to me. Maybe it’s because I do love Christmas so much.

And maybe it is because the song is attached to grief. And at this time of year, no matter how much healing I’ve done throughout the year, my grief is much more poignant, more present the deeper I get into the season. By the time her birthday actually rolls around, I’m deep in memories and loss. I haven’t found a way not to be just yet. And perhaps I don’t want “not” to be deep in those memories. I want to remember her.

And so, I’m not sure if choosing to sing was the right decision. It’s going to be difficult. Something tells me that my performing self will take over and I won’t think too much at all while on stage except where my next spot to stand will be and what the words are to the next line. Until the last song is sung. And we take our bows. And I go to meet my family…

…and she’s not standing there.

Right Decision or Not, I Sing is a post from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. Want more Chronicles? Like our page on Facebook! If you have questions, please contact me or @ me on twitter.