Gobble, Gobble
I’ve spent most of my adulthood celebrating the holidays with a rotating mix of other people’s families. I was always welcome, genuinely, and I’m grateful for every single family that let me pull up a chair to their table. But I never really felt settled anywhere. There were a few stretches of years here and there where I thought, “Oh, maybe this is what belonging feels like.” And I think I confused that consistency with home. When I zoom out now, I’m not entirely sure the feeling I had was belonging or just hope. Or maybe I was holding on to the idea of a “home base” so tightly that anything warm felt like it might be it.
Either way, the truth is the same… I’ve been looking for that feeling for a long, long time.
The truth is, I don’t know what a “family holiday tradition” looks like because I didn’t have one long enough to remember it. My mom’s parents died in a car wreck when I was thirteen, and that pretty much ended the version of Thanksgiving I used to look forward to. I was so young. I wonder now, thirty-plus years later, how much of that memory is real and how much of it is just longing.
I don’t know that I had any super memorable Thanksgivings with my dad’s father, but he was murdered when I was sixteen. We had a few good years with my dad’s mom, but she also died in a car wreck when I was nineteen. A lot of bam, bam, bam type shit. If memory serves, the last time we spent Thanksgiving there, I left with another relative to visit their paramour at a shady motel by the bayou where they were apparently facilitating illegal narcotics sales out of an upstairs room.
Yikes.
It’s strange to feel nostalgic for something you never truly had. Most people’s stories around the holidays involve grandparents and cousins and recipes passed down through generations. I didn’t have that. And I wouldn’t have had it either moving forward. Neither my brother nor I have children. My mom is dead (RIP, ol’ girl) and had no siblings. My dad’s huge family fractured after the matriarch died. There hasn’t been a “home base” in decades.
I’ve spent my entire adult life looking for one. And I kind of think… this is it. I’m it. And I’m okay with that.
The holidays tend to make me reflective and grateful. Thanksgiving especially sticks with me because the year before my mom died, she kept a public gratitude journal on her Facebook stories. In one of her posts, she wrote that she was grateful for cloudy days because they made her appreciate the sunny ones more.
Today is a sunny day.
Houston hasn’t looked this lovely in ages.
I chose to spend this Thanksgiving alone. I’m not sure I’ve ever done that, but I chose it this year.I had a sleepover with my toddler bestie last night, so this morning I woke up in a place filled with love and other humans. I got Sloanie dressed and in her “sparkly boooo-oooots” (I never want to forget the way she drags that long oo, it kills me every time) and sent her and her moms off to their Thanksgiving festivities. I absolutely knew I was welcome to join, and I had a couple of other invitations too. I am also certain I can think of at least fifteen people that I could text at random (some of whom I haven’t seen in years) who would save me a plate with no questions asked if I texted them and asked if I could come around theirs to visit. I’m truly thankful for that.
For a long time, any holiday invitation felt like someone throwing me scraps out of pity, and I absolutely loathe others feeling sorry for me (I used to be great at self-pity, though). But instead of spiraling the way twenties-and-thirties April would have, mourning the lack of a place I “belong,” forty-four year old me is sitting in the sunshine making a list of things I’m grateful for. Very Patty-coded of me. I am pretty grateful that I know realize pretty much every invitation I’ve ever been given is genuine, and I belong everywhere I’d ever spent the holidays. My Thanksgiving meal was hot and home-cooked, even if it was leftover from yesterday’s HomeChef meal kit. Apparently I’m learning to cook in my forties. I watched an episode of Dateline while I ate. I’m not saying it doesn’t get better than this, but it’s pretty damn good.
I’m fortunate because I’ve been given a perspective very few people have. By now, I’ve been to more holiday gatherings than I can count. Usually someone else’s traditions, which has been surprisingly wonderful to witness. I’ve seen families laugh, cry, argue, reconnect, fall apart, drink too much, pray too hard, cling to old stories, forget the rolls in the oven, or fall asleep on the couch with football humming in the background. I’ve seen families made up of strays (which is why I was there), reluctant families who meet out of obligation, loud families, quiet families, religious families, and families who gather with the same recipes and rituals every year because the love is woven into all of it.
I felt welcome in every single one.
And let’s be honest. The loud, funny, slightly dysfunctional, maybe drunk but extremely loving families always have the better food.
The holiday season looks different for all of us. It always has. But I’m pretty sure what matters is that we find something to be grateful for every single day and give the gift of our time, our heart, our presence, our love, or whatever we have to offer all year long.
I’m looking forward to seeing where I land next holiday season.
