The one about the three extra baubles
Every year since my daughters were born, they each have had a new ornament for the tree. We have quite the collection now they’re older, and it’s beautifully haphazard.
When the decorations box comes down from the attic it’s like a memory box. There is Rapunzel, aloof and untouchable in a glass dome. My younger daughter painted Rapunzel every day at nursery – most of the time she looked like an octopus, with thick blonde tendrils carefully crafted with those big thick pre-school brushes. And the gingerbread house that marked my then eight-year-old’s performance as the Gingerbread Lady in her last ever Perform show (and the memorable hours I spent stapling 100 Quality Street wrappers inside a pink tutu).
When our precious ornaments are tipped out onto the floor, the living room is dressed up in all forms of sparkle – glass, shiny metal, glitter, tinsel-coloured jingly-jangly bells. We have angels and fairies a-plenty, a random tartan star tied with a bit of hessian, and a naff pink plastic spiral that my eldest bought and straightaway pulled out of shape when she was three. The rule is that nothing is discarded even if it’s broken, unless it will cut your hands. So this year we lovingly hung an articulated but dismembered unicorn, a meditating Santa with one arm, a blue and white Dutch windmill missing its blades, and that much-loved and stretched-out aforementioned pink plastic spiral.
Our tree tells stories of our family, and it’s also how I used to justify being Jewish and having a Christmas tree – it’s an heirloom. One day, when the girls have their own homes, their own trees will be groaning under the weight of a lifetime’s Christmas memories, and their discombobulated ornaments.
And then there are three more baubles in the box. A trio of identical, unassuming, shiny silver-coloured spheres, hinged to hold spices and decorated with cutout snowflakes. These are my own special baubles. These I bought for the three little visitors I remember every year – the babies we lost on the way to completing our family.
We’re going back many years now but there were three miscarriages – one before my first daughter and two before my second (three losses and a premature baby – imagine how anxious that final pregnancy was). Looking back, obviously, I wouldn’t have had it any other way, because otherwise I wouldn’t have had these two daughters, who really every day bless and amaze me beyond my wildest dreams.
But these three were also hearts beating inside me for a limited time, which made them my babies too.
I don’t often think about these almost-babies anymore. One of my daughters is now in college and the other is a mid-teen. And these three baubles don’t ‘make’ the tree. They certainly can’t compete on flashy, glittery, plastic unicorn-fairy-angel-feather wings jingly-jangly naffness, but they still complete it for me.
It’s now over 20 years since that first ‘non-viable’ diagnosis, the missed miscarriage, and the ones that stayed a whole trimester before leaving. This year when the baubles came out I saw that my relationship with them has changed so much. I now see these pregnancies as beautiful experiences – visitors, who taught me love, joy, grief.
I hesitated to republish this piece as it was so long ago. But maybe it will strike a chord with someone. You might have read this far thinking I’m bonkers. I can live with that. But, all those years on, I do still like to say Happy Christmas to my three little ‘house guests’, wherever they now may be.