THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, December 19, 1995 TAG: 9512190036
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 154 lines
IF IT'S CHRISTMAS EVE, this must be Mommy's house. But 1995 is an odd-numbered year, so maybe this is Dad's house. Unless . . . is this the year we celebrate Christmas on Dec. 22 so we can visit stepmom's mother in Florida? Or are my stepsiblings flying here for Christmas? Or maybe . . .
It's the holiday season, so deck the halls - and decide what day to celebrate Christmas with your daughter before she goes to your ex's, shop like crazy, get those papers filed in court to fight for Christmas Day visitation, bake cookies, scrounge up an extra $300 for your 6-year-old's airline tickets so he can wake up in his mother's house Christmas morning.
Holiday time for the kids of divorced parents - and their parents, stepparents, siblings and stepsiblings - can be a mind-boggling dance of coordination, planning and, in a perfect world, cooperation to ensure that everyone - and we're talking about what could be four parents, eight grandparents and cousins, aunts and uncles too numerous to count - gets to spend Christmas with the kids.
``There's something called the multiplier effect on divorced families, because you have more individuals to work with,'' says Nancy Holcomb, who works at the Child and Adolescent Center at Tidewater Psychiatric Institute in Norfolk.
Which means the typical holiday stress is also multiplied - particularly on children.
Just ask Kim Cherry. Her parents divorced 19 years ago. But the 29-year-old Virginia Beach woman still feels pulled in two directions during the holidays. Sometimes the stress is so great that she spends Christmas alone or volunteering in the community.
When her parents split, her father was awarded visitation with Cherry and her older sister on Christmas Eve. Cherry still remembers her father's picking them up the day before Christmas as her mother sobbed in the living room. ``And there was nothing I could do about it,'' she says.
Finally, when she was 21, she told her mother she wanted to spend Christmas Eve with her. Her mother cried with happiness. Her father, however, was furious, Cherry recalled. Even the next day, when she asked how his Christmas Eve had been, ``He said, `It would have been fine but someone didn't show up, so it was ruined.'
``He put a guilt trip on me.''
That's precisely how NOT to handle the holidays, say family therapists Carolyn Moskowitz and Paul Cole, who run the local chapter of the Stepfamily Association of America.
``I think the trick is for the parents to be able to separate their own griefs and angers and to focus on the needs of the child,'' Moskowitz says.
Cole remembers the Christmas when many military families were separated during Operation Desert Storm. Many celebrated Christmas that spring, when families reunited. That's an example of the kind of flexibility divorced parents should also pursue, he says.
But he admits that that kind of cooperation can be difficult because often one or both parents still may have unresolved issues about the divorce. ``If they're caught up in their own needs, or in the emptiness in their own life, or they're angry at their ex, then they begin to battle,'' Cole says. And the right to wake up Christmas morning with the kids becomes a weapon.
Virginia Beach lawyer Mona Schapiro Flax rarely gets through a holiday season without arguing some type of Christmas visitation in court.
Many times, she says, divorcing parents think holiday visitation is worked out - perhaps covered under the vague term ``reasonable visitation'' in the custody agreement - only to find as December approaches that each has differing ideas about what ``reasonable'' means.
Some families do manage to focus on the child instead of their own needs.
Margo Delledonne of Virginia Beach is sending her two teenage daughters to Florida this year to spend Christmas with their dad. It's the first time since her divorce nine years ago that the girls won't spend Christmas morning in her home, but it was a sacrifice she was willing to make when her ex asked for the change to accommodate other family members.
So the Delledonne family will celebrate two Christmases - one Dec. 23 with the girls' and then another Dec. 25 with their 4-year-old son.
``I think I can handle it,'' Delledonne says. ``They're older now, and we have such a close family.'' She's remained so close to her ex-husband and his family that in the years after their divorce, he came for Thanksgiving dinner each year.
For some divorced couples, alternating years and days is often the answer to the Christmas conundrum, especially if they live close together.
David E. Dolinar of Virginia Beach shares custody of his 2- and 4-year-olds with his ex-wife. They alternate Thanksgiving each year, but Christmas is a split holiday. This year, she will have the kids from Christmas Eve through noon on Christmas Day, then he'll pick them up and keep them until noon Dec. 26.
The kids adjust fine, he says, in part because they're so young. ``They like the idea of having Santa Claus at everyone's house,'' Dolinar says.
Valerie Melville of Norfolk says holidays at her house are a conglomeration of ``his, hers, ours, East Coast, West Coast.''
She has two boys from her first marriage, and her husband has two boys from his former marriage. Together, they have three of their own children. That's seven kids ranging in age from 3 to 19, living in four different cities on two different coasts.
``Being flexible is the key to making it work,'' she says.
She's got flexibility down to a fine art.
She and her husband try to arrange visitation schedules with their exes so that all the boys are home at the same time. That means changing when Christmas is celebrated, she says, because she and her ex alternate who gets the boys for Christmas and who has them the day after. It means being understanding when a West Coast son comes for a week - but spends part of that week visiting other relatives on the East Coast. And one time it meant springing for an airline ticket two days before Christmas because one son didn't know in advance when he'd get off work.
When all the kids do descend on the house for a week during the, holidays, Melville sets some strict ground rules. She posts a list of chores for all the children and a set of house rules - like no 24-hour snacking.
Even with the strange schedule and the multitude of places and dates her children and stepchildren spend Christmas, there is still room for tradition, she says. Every year, the family decorates Christmas cookies together and drives around looking at Christmas lights.
In a season devoted to love and forgiveness, Claudia Powers of Chesapeake has a more daunting task than most of us. When she married 12 years ago, she became a stepmother, a mother-in-law and a grandmother all at the same time. And she learned to cope with her husband's ex-wife, who lives in New York. The family relationships are all friendly, she says, even during the holidays. If the ex-wife visits the stepdaughter during Christmas and the Powers household is having a party, the ex-wife is invited.
``Most people couldn't do it,'' Powers says. ``Even my own mother said, `How do you do it?' But you do it with a lot of respect. When there are children involved, you have to get along.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by Vicki Cronis/The Virginian-Pilot
Above Beth Melville, 3, are stockings for her and her two siblings
and four other children from her parents' previous marriages. They
live in four cities.
Kim Cherry, 29, still feels pulled in two directions during the
holidays, even though her parents divorced 19 years ago. Because of
the stress, she sometimes spends Christmas alone.
TIPS FOR DIVORCED PARENTS OVER HOLIDAYS
Watch out for the present pickle. Savvy kids will try to get two
huge hauls over Christmas - one from each parent. Smart parents will
get together before the holidays to coordinate gift-giving and
ensure they don't overdo.
Plan ahead. Working out plans ahead of time, especially when long
distances or many people are involved, is essential.
Have realistic expectations. If the child and parent haven't seen
each other for a long time, it is very easy to build up grand
expectations for the visit. People may try to do too much, or have
extensive fantasies of what may happen. Keep it simple. This will
make it easier to accomplish and cause less disappointment.
Put the focus on what you do have and build on that. You may need
to be ready to hear some of the old stories of holidays past, and
not react, so that you can begin developing the new traditions and a
new history of a blended family. Work on the co-parenting
relationship between the two ex-spouses and other involved adults to
work for the best interest of the children.
Sources: Paul C. Cole, LCSW; Carolyn Moskowitz, LCSW
by CNB