What to choose as the best Christmas ever?  Difficult to choose when there have been so many of them.

The wonderful times spent round the dinner table with my in-laws, Dave’s mom and I just slightly woozie with too much “Christmas spirit”.  I don’t know why but we always had to have a photograph of us all wearing silly paper hats and waving at the camera.

Watching toddlers climbing in and out of a big box that was so much more fun that the gift it had contained.

The times we spent running up and down the sidewalk, holding onto the seat of a new bike while one or other of our offspring learned to ride.

The Christmas Eve’s spent assembling toys and setting out the presents to get the best possible reaction when the kids saw what Santa had brought.  One year Dave had to assemble two dolly strollers and a large doll house.  It took us ages to get everything ready and we were just heading to bed at 3.00am when two of the girls got up to see if Santa had been yet.  It took bribes and threats to get them to go back to bed, so we could grab a few hours sleep.

As the children got older it got to be a bit of a problem to make sure each of the four girls got the same amount of parcels.  Gifts became more sophisticated and more expensive.  Christmas Eve’s became easier as we could put gifts under the tree earlier and get to bed at a reasonable time.  Christmas mornings were also more relaxed as teenagers do not get up at dawn to see what Santa has brought.  However, with the aging of the children comes the loss of innocence and the joy a parent gets out of watching them unwrap a gift.

Family Christmas dinners were not as enjoyable as one or other of the girls would want to hurry things along, so she could go visit friends whose parents also insisted their offspring sit down and eat with the family.  The idea of visiting relatives was appalling to them as it was taking away from time with friends.

Things changed with the arrival of our first grandchild, who was born on Christmas Day.  Andrew was the most memorable Christmas present in our family and with him, and the following grandchildren, came another generation of believers in Santa.   Another time of watching the unwrapping of brightly coloured gifts and taking photographs of toddlers climbing into boxes.

Many memorable Christmases, but my best Christmas ever came about eight years ago.

One of our daughters had problems for most of her life.  She was the middle child in a family of four girls.  Her “big” sister was just one year older and excelled at whatever she did, she found school work easy, had lots of friends and had no trouble keeping slim.  The younger twin sisters had each other to play with, right from the start and didn’t need the middle sister to play with them.

Our middle child turned into a loner, she found school work hard and, quite rightly, resented it when her teachers compared her to her gifted, older sister, who had been in the class in the previous year.  She was put into a “special learners” class, which was a small group of misfits with learning difficulties and behavioural problems.

Things went from bad to worse and, in her late teens, our child turned to drugs.  At first it was marijuana which didn’t seem to affect her too much, she met and partnered with a really nice guy and had two children.  However, things went sour and she turned to heavier and more addictive drugs.  She kicked out the boyfriend and began a downhill slide.

Eventually the children’s father got custody of the children as our daughter could no longer adequately care for them.  She turned away from family, probably because she was ashamed of what she had become.  She still called Dave and I but only for money.  Eventually she teamed up with a known drug dealer and sunk down even further, doing anything she could to make money to supply her habit.  Just because she was living with this guy didn’t mean she got free drugs.  She sold everything she owned to pay him for drugs, when she had nothing left, she sold herself.  This was our baby, our beloved child and it was heartbreaking.

Dave and I talked with our other children and they told us we were enabling her to continue this way by constantly bailing her out with money.  Up to this point we had sent about five thousand dollars to help her, but it didn’t really help at all.  It was a tough decision, but we decided that it had to stop. The next time she phoned she needed three thousand dollars or she would be kicked out of her home.  I told her no, we didn’t have it and could not help.  If she was homeless, she could come and live with us, but no more money for drugs.  She was really angry and hung up on me.

Dave and I had a good cry but decided to hold our ground.  The next day we got a phone call from her children’s dad, our daughter was badly injured and in hospital.

Apparently, the guy had demanded money from her and she had none to give him.   I guess he was high on drugs, probably she was too, but he chased her through the apartment, to the bedroom, with a gun.  As there was no other escape she jumped through the window of the second floor apartment.

She landed on a pile of lumber in the street below and, I guess, the neighbours had heard the ruckus and called the police and ambulance.  She swears that her guardian angel was sitting with her telling her all would be OK.  Hallucination, maybe, but it calmed her down until help arrived.

The result of the fall was a broken back, badly smashed arm and internal injuries.   A long stay in hospital was followed by many months in a clamshell body cast.  Meanwhile, her elder sister, who is a nurse, took her in and took several months off work to look after her.  The enforced idleness gave her no opportunity to get hold of drugs but lots of time to think.

With lots of family love and support, she managed to get her act together, get her children back and make a good home for them.  She has now been clean of drugs for eight years but still thinks of herself as the “black sheep of the family”.  I have told her countless times that we have always loved her, through bad times and good and, although she made some bad choices, we never gave up on her.

She really needs to take some counselling to improve her self esteem, but will not do this.  Meanwhile, we give her our love and encouragement and pray for her future.

So what was my best ever Christmas?  It was the one after her accident when we all sat together round the same dinner table in an atmosphere of love and family togetherness.  What more could any mother wish for?  Our daughter still believes that her guardian angel was with her on that horrible night..and so do I.