Ornament

January fifth. Otherwise known as Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas. A time for life-affirming discoveries and realizing the true value of family. On Epiphany six years ago I did the latter. But my epiphany about family values was as far from, Family ties are priceless and unbreakable, as it is possible to get. On that day I learned that family is just a useful little construct that parents invent to keep kids quiet. A castle that they build, not a naturally made cave. And if you build it, they will break it. That's the corollary to Murphy's Law that I learned all too early in my life.
The details are fuzzy in my mind by now. I prefer it that way. It's not like the general outline of what happened wasn't painful enough. It was Christmas, the one time of year you could expect my parents to stop their ceaseless violent fighting and maybe give TK and I one happy memory of our childhoods. Well, guess what. Other parents near divorcing might do that for their kids. But not my parents. Instead, their fighting escalated.
On the first day after Christmas/My true love and I had a fight. That song might have been joking, but my parents sure weren't. And the fighting got worse throughout the entire Christmas season. On Epiphany, they finally decided to get a divorce.

It's amazing how many memories a simple Christmas ornament can bring back. Both good and bad. I looked at the little puppy ornament, and wondered what TK was doing with his. We had each gotten one that fateful—make that fatal—Christmas. Matching ornaments for two brothers. I had hung them both on one of the lower branches of our tree. It was the highest branch I could reach. TK couldn't reach any of the branches at all. The two puppy ornaments were meant to be hung together. But that had happened only once. We had each taken our own ornament when we went our separate ways. I looked at our tree, trying to guess where TK would put his ornament on the tree he and Mom were decorating, wherever they lived now. I put the tiny little red and white puppy just off that spot. And for a second, I thought I saw the ghost of another ornament dangling near it.