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A Christmas Tale

Imagine you are divorced, and you have a child. (Or children.) The experience of holidays as a divorced parent is an ongoing reliving of your divorce. For every holiday there must be plans.

There will be negotiations, sometimes complicated arrangements. Some years you will feel overwhelmed by having to make everything happen by yourself, other years you will feel bereft, adrift: a childless castoff, hoping to find a place at some charitable person's holiday dinner.

It's not pretty.

You learn to adjust, but I don't think you ever get used to it. At least I didn't. My good intentions of giving my child the support of both parents through joint custody were put to the test by every major holiday. I grieved. I got angry all over again. Some years I bought her too many presents. Other years I was too poor to give her the kind of Christmas that I longed to be able to provide.

At some point during those years someone recommended the movie "An American Tale." What were they thinking? Within the first twenty minutes there is a frightening storm at sea and a little mouse loses his entire family. But wait--there's more. There's a song.

 

Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moon lightSomeone's thinking of me, and loving me tonight

Somewhere out there, someone's saying a prayerThat we'll find one another, in that big somewhere out there

And even though I know how very far apart we areIt helps to think we might be wishing, on the same bright star

And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullabyIt helps to think we're sleeping, underneath the same big sky

Somewhere out there, if love can see us throughThen we'll be together, somewhere out thereOut where dreams come true

And even though I know how very far apart we areIt helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star

And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullabyIt helps to think we're sleeping, underneath the same big sky

Somewhere out there, if love can see us throughThen we'll be together, somewhere out thereOut where dreams come true

--Linda Ronstadt

Oh. My. Goodness. I just bawled. This song absolutely epitomized to me the experience of having to be apart from my daughter, over and over again. It is, in my opinion, the anthem of joint custody: endless separations, sleepless nights worrying if your child will be okay.

I am thinking of this today because I am lucky enough now to be with my family on holidays. But I know that there are others out there who are not. In the pictures that popular culture paints for us of holiday celebrations, all families are together, all world travelers have come home, singles are finding romance, old adversaries have laid down their arguments, and Folger's coffee is brewing in the kitchen.

I wish it could all be so. Experience teaches me that it is not. So, no matter how you celebrate the holidays, I wish you joy. Maybe we are all wishing on the same bright star.

 

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