I Was Blind Sided By My Wonderful Life

"It's a Wonderful Life" is my all time favorite movie. I watch it every Christmas because I seem to need reminding every year of how very fortunate I am. And every year, I feel the warm gratitude of knowing I am loved and I am so blessed to love others deeply. I feel as if George Bailey and I are very similar in many, many ways.
The house bought for the children and I after my divorce from their father was an old 1923 bungalow that needed overhauling from top to bottom. The paint was peeling, the cabinets were original, the furnace creaked and moaned and the garage leaked. The kitchen looked as if it hadn't been touched in 35 years and the wooden floors were worn and dull. It had two porches and they were both in dire need of repair. What it did have was a decent roof for over our heads, a fireplace to warm us and my feeling of hope and home. I called it the Bailey house for obvious reasons. It even had a finial on the banister that would come off in your hands as you climbed the steps of the porch of the kitchen. I loved that house because I was able to buy it for my kids and me, so we had a soft place to fall. For all it was not, what it contained was everything I loved to my core and held precious to my heart, so for that it was the best house in the world.
Last night we went out to see a movie for the first time on Christmas day. Going to the movies was never something I thought I would ever do, but this Christmas half of my children were stranded out of town because of work, and every tradition we normally held seemed doomed by circumstance. I saw Christmas start to slide downhill for my family because the sadness of what we didn't have seemed so much bigger than the joy of what we did. I felt that if I didn't do something fairly quickly, all would be lost for this holiday, and I hated to see Christmas be reduced to another day in our lives as if nothing special had happened.
Christmas Eve we had all tried to do our usual routine, except this time we opened all the gifts. Watching "It's a Wonderful Life " together went off without a hitch. The fire roared in the fireplace, the Christmas tree and all the other lights I scattered around the house were lit and twinkling. After the movie we opened the few gifts we had and something felt terribly wrong. Things didn't fit, were the wrong color or were just plain wrong. Tom gave Mike and I a tent for future camping trips together and that fit like a glove, but the other stuff, well, you could feel that something was off.
Christmas morning there were no gifts to open and everybody woke, had their coffee and laid around for the bulk of the day. It was if no one knew what to do. Being broken in half had us feeling lost. I had defrosted a ham for Christmas dinner, and my youngest told me she was having difficulty eating pork these days. I didn't want to fight and I wanted her to know she was allowed to have her own opinions, so I had to come up with an alternative for her to eat. The plan for our traditional meal went out the window and I ended up making ham and green beans with spaghetti for Betty. We filled our plates with the odd combination and sat around the table. Mike nicknamed the meal "spamghetti" and made us laugh. I had decided to let go of the restrictive traditions that didn't seem to work for us and try and be more flexible. We laughed and took pictures and made jokes and laughed some more.
Since we were ditching most of the traditions anyway , we decided to get out of the house and go see a movie. We went to see "Blind Side". The theatre was packed to the gills to see the latest release. Our little theatre showing the movie had some, but not a lot of people in it. We sat together and watched, laughed sometimes, got choked up sometimes and felt like there really is hope for the world yet. It made me think about the kids I have "adopted" in the last few years. It made me think of one boy in particular. He recently graduated from college with his teaching degree. I love him as if he were my very own son. He has parents. He loves his parents very much. They do all they can for him. I merely fill in the gaps when I can. This young man had to claw his way through college. He worked all the time, missing holidays, and breaks. He had a bed with no comforter on it, in freezing weather. I bought the bedding. It was just me filling in the gaps. Oh, and just to clarify, when I say me, I mean me and Michael. I am so very proud of our "adopted" son. I love him deeply and squeeze him every chance I get. I scold him via telephone or email if I hear he is not doing what I feel is in his best interest. I offer my love and advice and counsel to this young man, whom we have grown to treat as family. He still works multiple jobs, as does the rest of my family. We are all doing the best we can with what we have.
Somewhere between the two movies I have seen this holiday season, lies my family. They are made up of every race, creed, gender and personality type. They look just like me and nothing like me (this includes my birth children, as well). If the quote " I think therefore I am" is true then surely "I love therefore I am blessed" should follow. This Christmas fell way short of any expectations I had at the beginning of this year for what it would look like. We were supposed to be able to go back home to Ohio this year because Mike had vacation. We were supposed to be able to take all our birth kids with us. We were supposed to be all together, happy, surrounded by friends and family and snow. None of what I had planned came to fruition, however the unexpected gratified feeling of knowing how loved you are, and how much you love others...well, it's no vacation, but it has been the best present I have had in years.