Holidays…rough to say the least. No matter what you’re going through, the family dynamic is not what it was. The family nucleus is gone. So how do you handle this?
In my case, I had decided not to follow my parents to Florida, but thought it the grown up, mature thing to follow my job to New England and so I landed in Ridgefield. Thanksgiving was coming upon us and I was whining about the fact that I had no family around. Someone told me to celebrate it with the three of us – me and my 2 boys. I thought that was ludicrous and depressing – my family was my brothers and sisters, my mom and dad and that alone put us at 7 without counting my boys and any nieces or nephews, aunts or uncles… you get my drift.
And so I made a Thanksgiving dinner for the 3 of us: turkey, stuffing, yams, pie, the whole nine yards. And when it came time to carve the turkey, we looked at each other, scratched our heads and killed that bird! It was then that I looked at Matt and gave him the job of watching the cooking channel for next year’s bird to find out how to carve a turkey. Yup – I believe we sort of made that work the following year and went to my sister’s a couple of times, and from then on it was our tradition for me to make great reservations and have a fantastic turkey dinner out…but together.
Was that hard? Was that easy? Was that depressing the first time? How did I get through it? How did I make Thanksgiving something the children would maybe look forward to? I think about how nice it would have been if I’d had others to chat with. I wouldn’t have been alone in trying to hold the family together, let alone myself. Did I make it … I believe so. But I look back and think…wow…