I haven't sent Christmas cards to anyone, except for a very few family members, since my divorce. For one, I haven't had enough extra cash lying around to justify spending $50 or more printing photo cards (or buying boxes of something cute and religion-neutral) and mailing them out. For two, I haven't felt a whole bunch like highlighting the fact that my kids' Yuletide experience is truncated and split between two houses. Basically, I gave up on sending Christmas cards, which was fine, since the stress of trying to get them signed, addressed, and in the mail before December 24th each year was sometimes a little overwhelming.

This year is a little different, though. This year we're really celebrating; it's our first Christmas together as a blended family. My SO moved in over the summer and we've been working toward establishing our lives together ever since. This year I thought it might be nice to send a picture of all of us to just our immediate family--both his and mine. I seriously considered dusting off my address book and making it happen. Then I realized something...

I don't have any pictures of all of us, together. Not even one. There's one person missing from every photo resembling a family picture: my SO's son, who most of us haven't seen since Father's Day.

This is my SO's year to have both Thanksgiving and Christmas with his son. This is also the first holiday season since his son told him he didn't want to be part of his life if he was going to be "like that" (whatever "that" is). So, Thanksgiving is approaching and there's no answer at his house, no initiated phone call to discuss plans, no email address by which they could communicate. Nothing. The silence is deafening. The ever-present hope that the two of them can at least meet for dinner or coffee in the next month is beginning to fade.

And there's certainly no opportunity to take a family picture. So, my dilemma last night was whether to send a photo of the five of us (the two of us and my three kids) without him or no photo at all? Then we talked about it and I could see the pain in my SO's eyes when he realized that there's no sense in highlighting this year's loss, just like there was no sense in highlighting my losses from before.

So we decided to put the happiness we do feel and do want to share with those we love in some other form so as not to call attention to the fact that my SO is more than likely going to spend this Thanksgiving and Christmas thinking about the empty chair at dinner, the empty space under the tree, and the empty place in his heart that his son used to fill.

If you're estranged from your kids, what do you do to make the holidays less painful? If you get to spend time with your kids, even if it's just a little bit, what do you do to make them feel special this time of year?