What a year for recessionista mama...

The year began simply enough: save money while staying home with my kids. My first act was to return a light blue velour track suit from Talbots so that I could buy a pair of Merrels. An innocent enough beginning. Who knew where it would lead?

Christmas morning on what was perhaps the worst Christmas ever. Christmas has generally not been my favorite holiday. When I was eight my mom gave me what I was lead to believe was a Cabbage Patch doll. It turned out to be, as my private school classmates enjoyed telling me, a fake - what I would later come to thinkof fondly as a cheap knock-off. The rear didn't say "Xavier Roberts." Instead, it was the name of a woman in our parish known for inappropriately high octave singing in the choir and clever crafts at the Christmas Bazaar.

About twenty years later my boyfriend of about a year gave me a small box from Tiffanys. I hadn't even thought of the possibility of a proposal - it had only been a year, after all! As I slowly opened the box, I though about it and decided that yes, I would marry him. I imagined the look of joy on his face when I told him. I pictured surprise on my parents' faces when we shared our good news.

The box contained earrings.

The next year he gave me a gold necklace in a ring-sized box.

The next year we didn't exchange presents because we were saving for our wedding.

Then we broke up.

Two years later, my Grandma died on Christmas morning.

I'd spent the past three years with my Muslim husband. People often asked how we spent the holidays. After all, how should a lapsed Catholic and a beer-drinking agnostic Muslim celebrate the birth of Christ? One year, we fled the country and spent a dreary day walking around in the rain. The other years we pretended we would do nothing, only to get caught up in a holiday whirlwind most characterized by me barking orders about how to hang stockings.

This year was, however, extraordinarily bad. My father died on Thanksgiving. Three weeks later, I was told my second baby would have to be delivered almost a month earlier. Christmas perhaps would have been best skipped, but we sat as we always did, on the floor of the house where we grew up opening presents.

Only this year, my only present was a light blue velour track suit from Talbots. Something the saleslady (probably 90) assured my mother that her daughter who just had a baby would absolutely. love.