The Christmas Tree Cakes

The year Olivia was born was the first time I remember coming across the Little Debbie Christmas tree cakes.

They had the bigger, individually sold kind in the cafeteria of the hospital where O spent her first eleven days.

Each afternoon when I’d go back to the hospital to see Olivia, I’d take Alyssa with me and we always go to the cafeteria and get her a Christmas tree cake. We’d spend a few hours up in the NICU beside O’s isolette, Alyssa would color or play with whatever little toy she’d brought with her and I’d either bathe O or hold her or just look at her, humming to her, ‘petting’ her, letting her know I was there.

Then Alyssa and I would go home and Tom would head to the hospital for the night shift. I was always there first thing in the morning, leaving Alyssa home with the promise that she’d go back with me later in the day and that we’d for sure get her that Christmas tree cake.

The Sunday before Olivia was born, I put up our Christmas tree. But I only managed to put the lights on before needing to just rest.

By the time O came home, I’d still not found time to put ornaments on the tree. But Alyssa, little three year and ten months old Alyssa, had taken care of that for me. She’d decorated the tree with puzzle pieces, small horses, ribbons and bows.

It was beautiful and heartbreaking all at once for me.

Once Olivia came home, Alyssa missed those Christmas tree cakes but Tom, ever the hero, found them by the box at Walmart.

We now have a tradition that we always have a box of Little Debbie Christmas tree cakes in the house. Olivia loves them.

I had a tough day yesterday. I was tired and out of sorts. The girls and I were all in bed by 9:00 last night and yet, after a night of uninterrupted sleep (thank you, Olivia!) I was still grouchy and tired this morning.

In fact, my mood was so foul that Tom called me once the girls were on the bus to make sure everything was okay.

Huh. I started this post to talk about the Christmas tree cakes and how they make me smile to hand one to each of the girls or when I pack one in Alyssa’s lunch. I like to remember how important they were to her during those hospital visits.

But it occurs to me that my foul mood might have something to do with those very visits.

See, I’ve told myself for the past five years that I came through O’s NICU experience unscathed.

We got a happy ending, see? So I have no reason to have scars, no reason to look back on those days with anything but gratefulness and perhaps a sense of nostalgia.

But that’s not true, is it? Even though she was only in that hospital for eleven days, I hurt each and every one of those eleven days. She was never in any mortal danger during that hospital stay. I know that now and I think I knew it then, but that didn’t change the fact that I had to leave her every single day, with strangers to care for her until I could go back.

It also doesn’t change the fact that when I left Alyssa each morning, my heart broke because she wanted to be with me, no matter where I was going and I left her there with Tom so I could concentrate on Olivia for a few hours before going back to Alyssa for lunch and our return to the hospital.

Those Christmas tree cakes were symbolic to Alyssa. They let her know that, at the moment I was buying her that cake, she was important, she was the one I was thinking about.

That sad Christmas tree that year, the one with the puzzle pieces so lovingly placed on the tree by a little bitty girl who wasn’t even four years old, it breaks my heart even today. It makes me ache for all that we lost in those eleven days that O was in the hospital.

Yes, we have our happy ending. We are blessed beyond measure.

But I mourn those days, those weeks that Olivia was such a miserable baby. I mourn that little girl that was Alyssa, that little girl who decorated the Christmas tree because her mommy was too tired to do it with her. That little girl who waited all day long for a Christmas tree cake to show her that her mommy was still going to put her first at least once in awhile.

I hope that by acknowledging my anger, my residual sadness of those events, I can go home tonight with a lighter heart, a knowledge that we did come through to the other side, that we’re all here, we’re all healthy and this Christmas will be everything I wanted O’s first Christmas to be.

If not, at least I know where the moodiness is coming from and even if it’s not relieved by the acknowledgement, I can own it rather than bury it.

My pain may not be nearly as great as what so many others have suffered but it is mine and I can’t heal from it if I don’t let it out, let the sun shine on it and burn it away until it’s just so much ash to be blown away by the winds of laughter and happy endings.