Christmastime is here...

Christmas has always been a big season for my family. In a home that always had minimal decorations, Christmastime transformed the house with its lights, and colorful ornaments, and green garlands and nativities. 

Every year my sister and I give each other an ornament. Before my sister and I were old enough to do this for ourselves our parents would give us the one new ornament. This means our tree is covered in ornaments from over the years - starting with handmade beauties of colored glue on frozen orange juice lids, on to glass ice cream cones and ceramic teacups from a year-round Christmas store in North Carolina, to handsewn owls that would sell well on Etsy. 

This year, when we were listening to "A Christmas Album" by Amy Grant and putting all the ornaments on the tree, my heart hurt when I picked up a few of then - but each made me remember and love my mom a little more. 

My mom cross stitched this for me when I was five years old, and she made one for my sister too. She loved to cross stitch, and even wanted to do it in her last few months. I love that I have something she made for me, to keep on the tree as a reminder of her love for me, every Christmas. 

I made this ornament for my mom the first Christmas after she got sick. I made some for a lot of my friends - I think it was the creative outlet I needed to be able to deal with all the changes that happened in my family that year. She loved the owl, she thought it was beautiful, but it makes me cry to know she only got to enjoy it for two years. And to know that now, since she's not here, it'll go in my ornament box when we pack everything up, and not hers. 

And this ornament - this ornament just reminds me that our family is missing a part. One of us isn't here this year, one of those hearts is missing. There's nothing I can do to change that, nothing I can do to bring her back. But there's also nothing that can take her out of the wreath, out of our life or our love. We will always be four, even when only three of us decorate the tree this year. 

I guess Christmas ornaments can really tell a story, can chronicle the life of a family. And even though they're only up for a month or so, I'm thankful that they're there each year, just waiting to make us remember.