I'm going to see my sister today.
She and her husband and beautiful little daughters are picking up my children at their father's and then coming to get me.
They will sweep us away to another world, where there is a whole family.
We will walk around looking at that world as if in a dream, and the kids will love it so much that they will cry once again when they have to leave.


Of course, they cry every time they leave me, as well.
I wish I were not the only source of grief in their innocent little lives.
I didn't want to be separated from them, and certainly none of my actions ever warrented it.
Sometimes life isn't at all fair, but I do believe things happen for some reason. There are lessons to be learned and still so much life to live. It will all make sense and come out right in the end.
With my sister or the arrival of any of my other siblings comes Christmas at last - the kind of Christmas I had as a child where I'm excited and delighted to find that once again they know just exactly what I most wanted because they know, love, and understand me like no one else in the entire world.
I feel whole when I am with them.
We went through a war-torn childhood together, and now we are so close that we all feel somehow incomplete when we are separated.
I had a therapist tell me once that Vietnam Veterans feel the same when they return to every day life without their comrades.
I suppose that's what's made being alone such a long, hard battle for me. I was raised with four siblings who were always there. I always thought I wanted nothing but peace, quiet, and privacy. Yet when I finally had the privacy and dead silence, I had no peace.
I feel it today, though.
Peace in being here in the quiet of my own space.
But also joy at the expectation of part of my family coming.
There will be trees and a present and Santa Claus will truly have come for me.