Makes me smile...

I seem to have a love hate relationship with the Holiday season now. Especially Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving was Natalia’s favorite holiday. She would count down the days and ask everyone around her “how many more days.” She would talk about all the different types of Deeelicious food items that would be available to try. I can still hear her ooh and aah over the selections to be tasted. Yes, she loved to cook and eat.

She would ask exactly how things were prepared, as if, storing the recipes away for the time when she would be a chef. This year, I was able to make peace with a lot of emotions that have been swirling around in my heart and Edgar and I have decided to take Thanksgiving by the horns. Next year we will begin having Thanksgiving at our house. It will be a feast of senses with everything baby girl loved and more…because now Sophia is more vocal about cooking. It will be a time to share with family again. I am not saying there won’t be sad moments but we know that this is something Natalia would love, everyone coming to her house for her favorite holiday.

Christmas…oh joy…You know, SO FAR, this year is not as hard as last year. The first Christmas without Talia we were able to keep extremely busy because we were moving into the house. The hardest time for me was Christmas shopping. My feet would carry me to the Crayola aisle in every store and my heart would be crushed again. Last year had a fog around it, as if God was taking the harshest edges of our grief away. It would clear for few hours and the pain would be intense but then the fog would roll in again and soften it. I did most of Sophia’s Christmas shopping online because there was no way I was going into a store and find myself looking for presents for Natalia. This year, I have moments, I don’t know how it will be the closer to Christmas we get but right now it’s not as bad. I was able to do the majority of Sophia’s Christmas shopping in an actual store. I even had to brave to Crayola aisle because Sophia has a passion for drawing and painting. I still can’t look at certain things in that aisle, like color books, but I’ve made my peace with that. I also think Natalia has been making sure we have a lot to do this Christmas season so that we don’t have a lot of time to reflect that part of us is missing.

It’s not that we ever forget part of us is missing. It’s just that Natalia has gotten better at knowing when we need her presence and her warmth to wrap around us. And that makes me smile…

Much Love,
Roni