Thanksgiving is...

Thanksgiving is?

An American tradition.

An oddly sanitized holiday, a mythology of pilgrims and Indians and the idolization of corn.

A time of loneliness.

We watch the commercials and parades and we go to the store, which is strangely out of both pie crust and potatoes, and we sense that there is something, some bigger thing, that we are supposed to understand and that we have somehow missed.

I have not had my own children with me for Thanksgiving in almost 10 years. This was a conscious decision...a calculated moment in front of a judge, where I had to weigh the honor due to the respective grandparents against the traditions I wished I could build. A Hallmark Thanksgiving dinner shooting butter pats to the ceiling in our napkins and drinking Grandpa's homemade cherry wine? Those memories from my own childhood would have to suffice. That Thanksgiving is a dream of nostalgia, something that could not be recreated today. My children, instead, deserved a holiday with their paternal grandpa, the one holiday he claimed, and he deserved this singular day with them. And so I would barter Thanksgiving for the next decade, in order to claim New Year's Day with my own mom, a Christmas of our own.

My Thanksgiving traditions became...running a 5K. Climbing on the roof to clean out the gutters before the horrors of winter descend. And then, going to dinner with my boyfriend, to his ex-in-laws, because that is the family we have. That is the family we have built, out of the messiness of all of our histories.

These holidays. These holidays are so messy. Fraught with what they should be, the greeting cards and mythologies of our upbringing, juxtaposed against the barbed wire of our realities. In my own childhood, we could not celebrate Christmas at Christmas, because every other year I belonged somewhere else. And so, the family Christmas was moved to New Year's Day, a day that Friend of the Court didn't value as much.

And then, decades later, in my own divorce, we were stuck attempting to somehow honor the traditions that had been set. Thanksmas? That went to his dad, celebrated on Thanksgiving Day. Christmas? That went to my mom, celebrated on New Year's Day. December 25? Every other year, celebrated with my dad in Florida...until my second mom died. And then we moved that tradition, too, because we couldn't try to pretend that a Christmas without Chris was even a Christmas.

And so, in this convoluted nonsensical explanation of the holidays, I give you this.

Thanksgiving is.

Who you choose to be with.

Who chooses to be with you.

Thanksgiving is a time of loneliness.  Thanksgiving is a time of togetherness. May you find a hand to hold, no matter what your traditions are, no matter what your family looks like.  May you find a space that feels like it means something. May you stumble upon an experience that, with time, could turn into a  tradition. May you find a space that you can claim as yours. Your family. Your safety. Your circle. Your Thanksgiving. I hope you find it. I hope you build it. I hope you make it yours. May you find your family.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Photo by Ryan Christodoulou on Unsplash