I have been fruitlessly attempting to come up with a post about Thanksgiving. The truth is, nothing I write in here works, or sounds too trite, or is just downright ... kind of fake. So I'm going to be un-fake and write how I really feel about the holidays right now, and I hope you will all keep an open mind. And, you know, not call me emo and stuff.
This is just one lowly opinion, and I promise I am not anti-holidays.
For most families, I hear the holidays are a time of joy and celebration. Laughter, music, food, togetherness, dancing through snowflake-filled-scenes of pine trees and carolers and snowmen or menorahs. Thanksgiving is the precursor to a full month of food just like it and fireplace-lit evenings filled with time together with big grins on. It is a warm, beautiful Norman Rockwell painting of a time for those families. It is what they look forward to. ... This is what I'm told.
My family has, truthfully, never really known such scenes in the past 20 years. We are a happy, loving family who likes the lower-pressure months of summer or late winter/ spring best. Months where there are very few celebrations, and we can quietly do our thing. We cook and spend time together much like that previous paragraph describes. But, actual holidays are a time when I think we have all generally longed for a year where we could just "pass." There are a few blazing reasons for this - we are a solidly joyful bunch of people - but the main one is grief.
To begin, let me just say... I know every family knows grief and loss at some time or another, and many reading this are sympathizing, probably even more than I, with what I am writing. I'm not meaning to be negative, it's just a reality: it's very hard to celebrate family memories when you deeply miss a family member whose absence is felt painfully enough throughout the year. I suck at faking anything, and faking a big happy "Oh man I LOVE the holiday season!!! Peppermint Mocha LATTE, please!" would fool no one.
Without going into all of the sad and depressing details of who we've lost or how, the description of the holidays is occasionally a bit darker than what it always seems like it's "supposed" to be. We try as hard as we can to avoid thinking about the changing landscape of what our "togetherness" means. We flip past the photos that have been brought out this time of year, including the faces of the people who will not be joining us. We each feel a conflicting combination of comfort in each others' presence, and overwhelming anxiety at the amount of people stuffed into one space - many of whom are feeling the exact same emotions. Alcohol is avoided like the plague, because otherwise it is just tempting to overuse it, which leads to one of us dragging the other out into the street to "take a walk" (But that's always a danger with alcohol and families ;) ). Conversation is either therapeutic or dismally lonely. It's just one of those paradoxes: this time of year is supposed to bring comfort and joy... and because it's supposed to bring those things, many times it also brings to light the reasons we don't feel that way. The oddest thing. I can't explain it. But it's how my family is feeling.
I am not saying this is how it is every year, and the past year has been harder than normal because we lost Lynn and haven't adjusted to that reality fully - the holidays tend to be this big fat reality check, it seems. There have been so many moments over the course of the past year where I have just wished I could respond to everyone's insistence that I have a GREAT Thanksgiving or Christmas with "Oh, I'm actually not doing them this year! Have a great one though!!" Get a year-long clean slate, and spend it doing absolutely nothing special for a few weeks, and then emerge the next year full of energy and ready for a brand new Holiday Season. That way, when I'm uncharacteristically quiet and cranky during the holidays, people won't wonder what the hell is wrong with me for being down during "the most wonderful time of the year" - they'll just figure "Oh right, Julie's not doing holidays this year. Whatever." (Shrug).
At the same time, though, I know I need to learn to just do that anyway. Start fresh, every year, rather than hang on to the memories of growing up that bring me so much longing.
Maybe that's what I will try for this year.
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