Wonderful Christmas Time
Shawn brought their ornaments carefully laid out on a tray and set them on the coffee table. As he and Audrey began to hang the decorations on the tree, Jon stood back with his hands in his pockets watching them. A strange, unsettled feeling draped over him as Shawn and Audrey laughed and teased each other. It was like they'd forgotten he was there. That feeling pressed heavily on his shoulders and he squirmed under its intensity. It wasn't until Shawn wrapped an arm around Audrey and told her how happy she was that she'd stayed, that he realized that he could walk out the door and they wouldn't notice.
The feeling of being left out dug into his neck and forced him to stare at the floor. He knew they wanted him involved, but he was so reserved that they went on around him. Now he didn't know how to join in, and he felt it was too late to do so.
Jon was so immersed in his gloomy thoughts that he never saw Audrey leave the room nor did he see her walk up behind him. Her slim arm slid around his waist and startled him. With his hands still in his pockets, he turned his head to look at her. She was leaning her chin against his shoulder, gray eyes shining in the lights of the Christmas tree. She held his ornament up to him.
"Hang just one," she entreated. "It's my favorite."
There was no way he could say no to her, so he took his little tree ornament with the crooked frame and tried to hang it at the back of the tree, but she pouted until he hung closer to hers and Shawn's ornaments in the front.
That can't be her favorite, he thought. She's just bein' nice. It surprised him that his thoughts weren't quite as dark as they had been before he hung the ornament. In fact, that feeling of being inadequate and left out was slowly being pushed out by something else.
"Is it too late to make a Darth Vader ornament?" Shawn asked, stepping back to scrutinize the tree.
"Yes!" Jon and Audrey answered simultaneously.
Jon looked at her and they laughed together. He felt the weight lift more. With each ornament hung a lightness filled him until he forgot about his previous feelings of insufficiency and displeasure in himself.
From that point on, he willfully dropped his attitude and disappointments of Christmases past to fully join in with Christmas present. When he did, he saw that the house was nothing like the cold, store bought, professionally set up Christmas displays he grew up with. Their decorations were mismatched and imperfect, too much of some and not enough of others. But everything was done by them and for them.
If Jon was being completely honest with himself, this was the Christmas that he wanted when he was nine- the Christmas he never got. It was family doing the holiday activities together; the people he loved with him actively engaged with each other.
It was not being alone.
For the first time in an exceptionally long time, he wasn't going to be alone for Christmas. He'd never admitted to anyone that being alone at Christmas bothered him or that it drove him to make some extremely poor decisions during the holidays.
When Shawn finally showed them the ornament, he had picked out in Glen Mills, Jon then realized how much things had changed for both. The ornament was a clear heart, framed in white poinsettias that were tied together at the top with a white bow. Hanging from the bow were two hearts. Etched in the glass were the words:
Our First Christmas Together
1994
Both he and Audrey knew the ornament was actually meant for a newlywed couple, but neither said a word about that as Audrey hung the ornament in the heart of the tree- exactly center, a place of honor amongst the others. Jon rearranged the lights so that they illuminated the heart and made it glow. Shawn stood between them, his arms around them both, looking so happy.
This was not the same kid he took in seven months ago.
That kid would not be standing here with them doing what other kids his age wouldn't want to do for the most part. But then seven months ago Jon himself wouldn't have been leading family festivities in any form. Seven months ago, he would have been horrified by the thought of such a thing. But now standing there in the living room with Shawn and Audrey he finally had to admit that this- a family- was what he really wanted, and he hoped that every Christmas going forward would be like this one.
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