🎄Christmas Bits...🎄

We are very rapidly approaching what is likely to be one of the most subdued and sad holiday seasons for many around the world. 

I will be alone this Christmas however on Christmas morning I will have the pleasure of being able to have a hour tweet visit with fun dear friends mostly in the U.K.

Later in the day I will then get to have a Zoom visit with other very dear friends.  

From childhood on I learned how to be alone.  Even on holidays.  So with gratitude my glass is full even with the many losses I have endured.

Throughout my childhood filled with alcoholism, very fighting parents, and violence, most of my Christmases became spent with fear and tears.  I do not have very happy memories of Christmas as a child.  Though sad and painful then I have never let this keep me from having bright happy Christmases once I began living on my own at seventeen.

As an adult a few Christmases had to be spent in hospital.  One year was spent in a Intensive Care Unit following severe complications during a spine surgery two days earlier.  I wrote about this here recently.  

Christmas morning Dr. Mortara came anxious to see if I still had any movement in my legs.  Only a few toes on my right foot moved.  He began crying because this grieved him so.  I was grieving for HIM, grabbed his hand and told him I WOULD walk again.  He was so moved he cried more, but tears of gratitude to see my indomitable spirit was still so strong.  Those shared moments of compassion turned what could have been a terrible Christmas for us both into a very memorable touching one.  And I did eventually learn to walk again.

This likely will not surprise my dear readers to know how deeply I latched onto the song "Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer" as a child.  It STILL strikes an emotional chord in me, but not as much as it did as a child.  

Though I knew Rudolph was not real he still opened a door showing me for the first time in my young life I was not alone in being ridiculed and shunned.  To be a child without normal parental acceptance, support, and reassurance, the discovery of Rudolph went deep.  It also instilled a hope in me too, because eventually in the song Rudolph finds acceptance at last.  Even admiration.  

Still somehow I sensed my being ridiculed and shunned would happen always yet I really believed there could come the day when the pain of this would no longer hurt me inside...that I could break free.  

With my determination and the help of my mentor friends, I did.  And haven't stopped soaring yet.

Not surprisingly though I have the 1964 stop motion classic of "Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer," besides several ornaments, figurines, and even a cute stuffed 

Rudolph Aiden gave me.  So that little Reindeer still has a very special place in my heart.

Often other Christmases alone yet not alone were spent with my horses.  Quite often going for a exhilerating gallop in the snow.  A person with the soul of a horse who has a horse is never alone.  

And a person with the soul of a horse whose body is broken who was blessed to have horses five decades 

is never alone because they still keep me soaring.

Although many of my Christmas Days were alone this often was because friends were on the road to visit family.  Yet we would have a wonderful day of joy and love opening presents, eating, and having fun on Christmas Eve day, making very bright, happy, loving memories.  Or the day after.  Whenever we could.

Being such an outgoing kid I was always surrounded by friends.  When I was nine I presented my neighborhood friends with the idea of us caroling to each house one evening a day or two before Christmas Eve.  It became such a hit with the kids and the homes throughout the neighborhood we did this five years!  

Our caroling became an eagerly awaited event for all, especially at a time when carolers were no longer going around caroling anymore.  Besides we had a whole lot of fun doing it too.

We even rehearsed making sure we learned the words properly to all the well known carols and other well known songs.  Younger kids from the ages of five to nine were included too.  Often lots of snow was on the ground while snowing too, making the fun we had doing this even more magical.

Afterwards we would gather at someone's home for hot chocolate and cookies we had baked ourselves for this.  This was and is still a bright childhood memory of the season I have always held warmly in my grasp.

Absolutely my best Christmas Day ever was the one when Aiden insisted we ride our horses beyond the fields into the woods when there was deep snow on the ground making the ride more magical.  I had no idea of what was about to happen.

Suddenly Aiden dismounted Sierra in deep snow.  I had asked why he wanted to dismount in such deep snow.

He said, "This is why," then placed a ring on my finger asking me to marry him.  Of course I said, "Yes!"

What a bright Christmas moment that was!  And certainly one I will hold warmly in my grasp forever.

I have learned on this journey of mine Christmas and every day there is treasure if we seek it.  

Even when alone, on a horse, in ICU, or in a theatre, magic happens.  

As it did for one born with a red nose and a Little Person both finding the magic of acceptance too.