Holidays » The Chronicles of Munchkin Land

Fireworks and Loss

Jul 062011

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.

Plaid Dresses

Holidays 1 Response »

Oct 262010

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.

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