Life in an adoptive family has at least one guaranteed constant. Holiday Hell. Such an rude and impolite, yet accurately descriptive term for what transpires like clockwork in its predictability.

Naďve Mamas, like I shouldn’t still be, try and provide sweet, wholesome holiday experiences for our children to participate in and remember their childhoods by, only to have it blow up in our faces time and time again.

When one adopts children from the foster care system, one invites all their past negative experiences into one’s family as a side result. In my children’s pasts, their birth families drank, partied and did drugs constantly, holidays not only being no exception, but were usually a reason to amp up the alcohol induced rampages, the children being the obvious victims of all this.

My kids, subsequently, did not join our family with positive holiday memories.

Knowing this, I still try and keep it all low keyed, with an emphasis on family togetherness, if anything. If I have a big dinner, often older kids will balk, come up with excuses, not show up, or worse yet, show up and act out…not a pretty sight in grown kids.

This Easter I didn’t invite anyone. Whoever showed up could eat, just like any other day, so I eliminated some of what could have been Holiday Hell. A 20 year old, who still lives at home, refused to attend church, a no-no on any day, an “are you outta your mind?” on Easter transgression. He knew that, he did it to be hateful, to get me to fuss at him, justifying his leaving in his mind, his age-appropriate moving out that he doesn’t really want to do.

If you live in MY home where I pay the bills, you go to church. Period. If you don’t want to follow this one rule, you may move out. DUH.

He needs to move out, pay his own bills, and learn that life is difficult. Grow up, son.

What my children seem to take a long time to learn is that they take their problems with them. Mama is not the problem. Eventually they do learn this, they return home older and wiser, ready to talk it out, and their self-awareness then is gratifying to me. The in between years can be awful though as they continue to lash out at me, angry at their birth parents, angry at me for doing what their bio parents did not do, which is to love and care for them.

I’m fairly spent, coloring my grey hairs, amazed at the lines in my face from the stress and strain on my emotions. In amazement yesterday 23 year old Monica exclaimed, “But Mama you’re so strong!” Neither realizing nor comprehending the physical toll this has all taken on me.

Mother’s Day is coming up, most of my kids strive to impress me that day, but enough of them attempt to make me “pay” for being the mother so that I dread the Holiday Hell that’s headed my way.

I’ll downplay the day, endure it like I did on Easter, and continue being the Mama regardless of their issues.