It's that time of year again.
A time for traditions and special moments with family.
Friday night I nearly had a Christmas tradition disaster. For years, I've been making a photo calendar for the parents and grandparents in our family. And this year, when I sat down to make it, I discovered that I did not have a picture of my boys by the Christmas tree to put in the month of December.
That's just not acceptable.
There has to be a Christmas tree picture for December.
The boys were at their dad's and I needed to make the calendars for a family gathering the next day. I had to finish creating the calendar that night if I had any hope of getting them made by the next morning.
I had been too busy at work this past week to remember to snap the picture while they were with me.
I tried to do without. Put myself in full-on perspective mode and tried not to make a big deal out of it.
I even filled the December page with fun pictures of Jake in a floating unicorn in a pool, all three of us at Starbucks in Seattle, Ryder making a funny face....
But it just wasn't okay. It just didn't feel right.
So I called the boys and I asked them for a special favor. I went to their dad's to pick them up, for the sole purpose of taking a picture of them by my tree. At 9:00 p.m.
Fortunately, they were good sports about it. I made that round-trip in less than 15 minutes. And I got my picture.
Some of you might ask whether it was really that important to go out of my way to get that picture.
I would say yes. Yes, it definitely was.
There's been so much instability in my life. I've lived in more places than I have fingers or toes, and most of them not by my choice. I've survived divorce as a child and as an adult. I've faced life's challenges and overcame most of them all on my own.
The few traditions I have are sacred.
Christmas brings with it two of my favorite traditions. One is the creation of the photo calendar, and the other is spending Christmas Eve with my family.
I can't sacrifice either of them just because life gets busy.
I will go out of my way to keep those traditions alive...
Even if that means making a 15 minute round-trip drive at 9:00 on a Friday night just to snap a 30-second picture of my boys by the Christmas tree.
