Displaced Holiday Goer

This coming weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving. Our actual holiday is Monday, but most people celebrate on Sunday. At least, that’s what my family has nearly always done. Monday is reserved to lazing around the house, maybe making soup from leftovers and eating cold turkey sandwiches with cheese and mayo and tomato.

This coming weekend is the first weekend for Rock to take the kids. He’ll be picking them up on Friday afternoon, after school and bringing them home on Monday afternoon (I won’t even go into the argument that ensued over * that * one…suffice it to say that he didn’t want to keep them until Monday even though it’s been weeks and weeks since the kids have spent more than two hours with their Dad and likewise, weeks and weeks since he has spent more than two hours in their presence. I thought he’d be going out of his head being away from them…imagine my surprise…Anyway, it took me actually saying, “If you don’t WANT them, I don’t want you HAVE them” which he took offense to so he decided to keep them until Monday, mostly to save face. Insert me making my disappointed and disgusted face * here * ). Rock has a fairly big family made bigger by the fact that his parents are divorced and both have re-married so there will be lots of goings on for the kids this weekend. I’m happy, at least, about that. His mother and grandmother and aunt and cousins all adore the kids and I know that they’ll pick up where his slacker ass leaves off.

I mentioned in my previous post that my sister is not on speaking terms with either of my parents. That sort of implies that there was a fight, which in every technical sense, isn’t true. What happened is that my sister wrote my mother a letter. A very, very honest letter that I was proud of Judy for writing. She bore her soul in this letter. Let it all out. Not just anger, but her feelings of sadness and frustration and hurt by my mother’s actions and words over the years. She sent it and prayed for a response from my Mom. She wanted, just this once, for my Mom to step up to the plate, realize that not everything is always about HER and start re-building the relationship that was so lacking with her youngest daughter.

My mother didn’t respond.

So, needless to say, Judy will not be coming home for Thanksgiving weekend. My Dad’s sister, my Aunt Lynda, will be out of town for the weekend visiting friends. My Aunt Lynda is really my Dad’s last living relative with the exception of some cousins that we pretty much never see. All of this means that my parents are, obviously, not having Thanksgiving dinner at their house this year. Nobody to come after all…

Well, except for me.

And there’s no way in Hell that I’m going over there alone. I probably should have mentioned that while my mother didn’t respond to Judy, she’s done lots of responding to me! And I’m not in the mood for some Thanksgiving railroading, if you know what I mean.

So what does all of this mean for this Canadian girl?

For the first time in my adult life, I have nowhere to go, nowhere to be, on a holiday weekend. I am a displaced holiday goer.

Don’t get me wrong…I’m not upset about this fact nor am I stressed out or hurt. I would much rather spend Thanksgiving Sunday wrapped up on the couch or in bed with Don before eating a Thanksgiving pizza together (which is exactly how we’ll be spending the weekend, providing we can find someplace serving pizza open on Sunday) than I would all dressed up, trying to stop the girls from playing with Gramma’s porcelain doll collection in between eating overcooked turkey and making light conversation and running interference with Michael.

But it still feels strange. And I’m guessing that this feeling of being displaced will only continue until I have a few holidays as a single mother under my belt. I’m grateful for Don’s distraction this weekend and am banking on spending Christmas together, too and haven’t given much thought to what the every second weekends in between will be like.

I wouldn’t change a thing. Really. I wouldn’t. This split was long overdue and for a while there, I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to get Rock out of the house before winter. It was downright painful to be in the same house together and the roller coaster of emotions was in overdrive much of the time, going from high up and getting along and being respectful to way down low and being taking advantage of and being called a whore to kinda in the middle and not speaking much to one another at all. No, I wouldn’t go back to that if my life depended on it.

But…

Thanksgiving serves as a reminder of what has passed away and grieving is in order, even if I had my part in killing it in the first place. I am no longer an honorary member of Rock’s family. I have noone to bake a pie or lemon loaf for. I will no longer be greeted by the warm smell of baked bread and brewed tea upon opening the door to his Grandma’s kitchen. Nor will I be part of the extra long walk after dinner is over, talking about Reiki and angels to his ever curious aunt.

So what to do?

Give thanks, I guess.

For what has passed but also for what it was at one time in my life. It wasn’t always so painful. It wasn’t always neutral at best. And just as I wouldn’t change the course it’s taken, I also wouldn’t change the years that preceded it, either. Not for anything. Rock might have regrets, but I don’t. I like to believe that we just outgrew one another after years of growing together and it was time to go our separate ways and find paths of our own to walk along and grow into.

Give thanks for what I have now. The new learning might be painful at times (especially as I realize that everything I thought my mother was my entire life was actually a lie… a carefully crafted façade…and underneath it all is a woman whose emotional growth stopped at the age of sixteen) but I’m grateful just the same for the knowledge. Once you know something, you can’t un-know it. It will be with you forever, whether or not you choose to acknowledge it. And while seeing everything in a new light is absolutely overwhelming at times and terrifying, it’s also a refreshing truth. I’m not the one who has lost her mind. Well, I have, but not necessarily in this case!

Give thanks for the love that I do have, however far away it might be. Give thanks for the weight of the world being lifted from my shoulders with every phone call. Give thanks for the space to unleash my own truths without judgement. Give thanks for the fun and the laughter in between the heavy moments, too.

I have a small rug that my father hooked for me. It sits in front of my living room chair and I’m fond of rubbing my feet against it while I comfort Michael or watch TV. It says, simply, “THANK YOU”. He fashioned it after a random anonymous quote I found once, a long, long time ago that read, “If the only prayer we ever said in life was thank you, that would be enough”.

I think that in between the pizza and the cuddling and the driving and the nursing and the shopping with Don this weekend, I will spend some time with my feet gently rubbing against the soft yarn, giving my prayer of thanks.