My ex husband and I got divorced when our son was only 2 years old. I always shared the holidays with him even before we had a schedule in place that forced me to do so. I remember when we were first hashing out the terms of our split and his visitation with our son, I had gone to see a lawyer to help me review and mediate the whole thing with some modicum of intelligence and awareness of my own rights. The topic of the holidays came up and she told me that the court system is very quick to put the holiday schedule in place when the parties can’t reach an agreement. She proceeded to show me this schedule and I was immediately appalled at the ridiculousness of the entire set up. As I glanced down the paper, my eyes jolted back and forth between mother’s year and father’s year and all these special days and memory making occasions being hacked apart bit by bit and hour by hour so nonsensically that my head was spinning. I know everyone always says that the father’s rights are never protected or are second rate in these situations, but I have to say, in my own personal experience, this couldn’t be further from the truth. I went on to tell the attorney that Christmas Eve seemed like one of those exceptions to the rule, like – no one could possibly expect the child to sleep outside their home on Christmas Eve and wake up Christmas morning and not walk down their own staircase to their own living room to see Santa had visited them under their own tree. My attorney went on to tell me that although the Christmas holiday is broken out that way on the schedule, most fathers understand that a child should be home on Christmas morning and don’t really push the issue too much. Well as it turns out – my ex is that apparent one in a million kind of gem (insert sarcasm) that felt it so necessary to follow the holiday schedule to the letter – including the Christmas Eve breakdown in all its glory starting when my son was at the ripe age of just 5.

Sadly I know there are probably plenty of families who deal with this type of splitting of the holidays, but it appears I don’t actually know any of them! So as I pace around my son’s empty bedroom on Christmas Eve, I feel utterly alone. And the crazy thing is, that day in and day out in all of the beautiful chaos of being a Mom and handling the school lunches and parties and boo boo’s and doctor visits and homework and constant non-stop mommy-ing, its supposed to be these moments that make those moments feel so very worth it. These moments where you peak in on your babies to see them asleep peacefully dreaming of sugar plums; knowing that all of that warmth and innocence is all right down the hall from you. But that wasn’t the case for me tonight and unfortunately probably won’t be for the next 10 years to come.  Because even next year when the magical and all powerful court holiday schedule shows some favor on me and I’m blessed with having Christmas Eve and morning again with my baby, I’ll have to say goodbye again far too soon for we will still be under the thumb of this ridiculous doctrine of cruelty from which there seems to be no escape. And who does it really serve, or is it just punishment for everyone involved? What person or group of people came up with this utterly asinine way to shuffle a poor child from a broken home around so much that their poor little head will surely spin and think for any bit of certainty or purpose that you have just helped to make their situation better or more bearable! Who is it really for??

And alas, more sadly, in my situation atleast, the diligence to stick to the schedule with such rigid regime is done sadly more out of spite and in an effort to “get what’s owed to him” than it is in the desire to want this quality time or these memories.

As the clock winds down on this night, I ban myself from Facebook and from all the photos of complete families with their kids celebrating this joyous night at church or at home or under the tree in a way that makes the world feel that it is just right and perfect and as it should be. I lie in bed and reflect on the times growing up that I always wanted to be an attorney. Gone are the days where I felt that the justice system was exactly that — JUST, and that it would always show favor on the well-meaning person, the honest person, the good person, the hardworking person and ultimately the deserving person. But this had never been the case in my situation. In all my interactions with the court system thus far, they seemed to turn a blind eye to the drug addict, the compulsive liar, the empty promise maker and the rule breaker. There seemed to be so little consequence, and such a tangled web to weed through in order to get any relief from my hands being tied to such crappy, short sighted, unfair puppet strings that govern my child’s life right now. I wish I could end this with a solution but perhaps the best I could hope is that the comfort this can bring to anyone who reads it is to know, you aren’t the only one with a Christmas Eve that looks like mine. Keep fighting for your babies, and making memories with the time we are given. And the reminder that always brings me solace is that it isn’t about how much time we have with our kids that will ultimately matter to them, but it will be the quality of that time that will influence how they view their childhood and your relationship with them in the years to come. Merry Christmas and a final countdown of T-13 hours until my holiday truly begins.