The Chronicles of Ingham: January 2013

The Ingham Family didn’t put up a Christmas tree until December 22^nd this season. We waited so long that when we drove up to the second closest Christmas tree lot to our house (the closest being already closed up), we found it was completely devoid of people, staff included. There stood maybe two dozen trees, and the warming shed had a sign on it that read, “ANY TREE $25, LEAVE MONEY IN SLOT.”

It was a bumpy beginning to an evening that we all anticipated with excitement. But when we finally got it home, in the tree stand, and had strung the lights and hung the ornaments, we huddled on the couch and let the glow of the tree be our only light. As we stared, Ellen said, “I love my family.”

This sort of statement from a 5-year-old, for whom the magic of Christmas still thrives without any effort at all, (unlike we adults who must be very intentional about keeping it from being diluted by stifling lists of Christmas to-dos and Christmas expenses) would bring any mother to tears. But at Christmas 2012, Ellen’s words had a very particular gravitas.

At the end of the season, as the calendar year becomes gray and wrinkled and long in the tooth, the custom is to look back on the happiness, the sadness, the changes, the constants, and to ponder how we arrived at this time, and who we are at this moment. Just as we don’t notice the distance we have swum until we pass a buoy and think to look back to the one prior, we don’t notice the passing of a year’s time until we bring to mind who we were and how far we’ve come since the last time we toasted auld lang syne. We “traveled” far this year – farther than ever before. The Ingham family of January 2012 seems so far in the distance that we, the Ingham family of January 2013, can barely see it.

In November, Dave and I made the decision to end our marriage.

Although we believe with conviction that this decision is the right one for us as we move forward, we don’t believe that our decisions of the past were misguided or wrong. So, out of deep and sincere respect and gratitude for the life we had as a couple, we look back upon not only the past year, but the past fifteen years. Since we began – at high school graduation in 1997 – we have experienced college graduations, graduate school and medical school graduations, engagement, a wedding day, the purchase of a new home, the beginning (and welcome end) of a residency, acceptance of new jobs, weddings of siblings, funerals of grandparents, and the births of our own two daughters.

The beginning - 1997

If we must condense the passage of time into one sentence, the easiest way to do it is to highlight these Big Days. Without a doubt, they are important – buoys in the Ocean of Time. But an ocean is made of the water in-between the buoys. And a life is made with the days in-between the Big Days – days of “do we have a dinner plan?” and “I’ll be home in fifteen minutes”; days of “have you seen my keys?” and “watch it, that milk’s been in there awhile”; days of “did you grab the mail?” and “thanks for folding the laundry.” The 5,000+ Everydays which Dave and I shared are the ones that really defined us, and from them have sprouted the elements of our relationship that will never be dissolved, regardless of the dissolution of our marriage. As we enter this new phase of our relationship and our lives, Dave and I will continue to be held together by these important elements – our care and love for one another, our respect for one another, and the memories we made during some of the most formative years of our lives.