But everything was different then.
In 2013 with every slice of sweet potatoes, turnips, parsnips, and the like, the knife made a loud thud on the carving board. I barely heard the loud noise, even though it echoed throughout the kitchen. A stiff glass of apple brandy with an ice cube sat next to the cutting board, and I struggled to look through red, swollen eyes. The bottle of apple brandy was my best friend Christmas Eve & Christmas.
Everything hurt and at the same time nothing hurt. Occasionally my brain reminded me that I was supposed to become a mother the next day, and at those it took all my strength to fight back tears and keep my hand from wandering to my stomach.
I tried so hard to forget, to forget the baby boy that was supposed to grace my household at that time. Tried so hard to stop reliving that day at the perinatologist where one by one our dreams crumbled. My husband having to leave the room to cry because he didn't want me to see the tears running down his cheeks, because he thought he had to be strong for me. The single man in my life who never cried, who grieved the loss of olive for far longer than I, who was afraid to touch me for months because the pain was still so strong, and who spent every single day of my subsequent pregnancy in a pit of silent fear that history would repeat itself. Attempting to comfort himself in statistics that had already worked against us.
December 1 2013 I went to my psychiatrist and told him I wanted to try getting pregnant again in the new year, and I had to wean off my meds. Christmas without the meds that helped numb the pain of Olive's departure was difficult, hence the brandy. Hence the hiding alone in the basement, or bathroom, to stifle my sobs so no one would hear them. I surrounded myself with family that year, hosting my family and my in-laws, figuring that misery loves company. We could all be miserable together.
But this Christmas is different. In January, in a drunken haze, I decided to "try" for a baby again. One month later, after visiting a medium whose last words to me were, "Your grandfather wants you to know you should stop drinking coffee.", I took a pregnancy test; a second line glared back at me.
I sobbed. and I sobbed. and I sobbed some more.
I won't detail the pregnancy here, I'll save that for another post, but it took me a week to tell C that I was pregnant. I just couldn't do it.
So, this Christmas is different because as I was writing this, this face was staring at me.
There is no bottle of brandy this year. There is no sobbing behind locked doors, or stiff embraces between me and Chris. There's no numbness.
A year ago today I was convinced we were doomed to spend Christmas alone. I never would have dreamed that only a year later, our hearts would be swollen with a love that we never knew was imaginable. I never dreamed the following Christmas would be full of baby snuggles, smiles, and love radiating from everyone.
I never dreamed I would actually be a mother.
But I am. And I was a mother last year also. A mother who had been faced with one of the most difficult decisions in circumstances that no one should face.
I type this with tears running down my cheeks. I still cry for the son that I never got to hold. That never got to feel the love of his mother. Having S didn't eradicate that pain, and it never will. The first few days after I brought S home I cried for the son I didn't bring home 10 months ago. S doesn't replace Olive. Nothing and no one will ever replace Olive. He will always have a piece of me, and he will always be a piece of me. He changed my life in ways much different than S did and ever will.
And, since I'm hysterical now, I will end this here, to go and hold my son on his first Christmas morning.
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