From My Journal: In Gratitude

This Thanksgiving Day Dan and I will be alone. Perhaps this will be the first Thanksgiving without the daughter who will be with her girlfriend's family. We kiddingly referred to ourselves as Thanksgiving orphans when the daughter made the above announcement. “We've never gotten this holiday together as a major celebration,” she mentioned, “and we'll come to you for Christmas Eve and Christmas because that is our special time.” She's right, of course. While for many Thanksgiving is a time to spend with multitudes of extended family members, ours has been a three-some or an attempt to be with family members where cousins have totally ignored us or acted rudely. We've also had failed, miserable attempts at being with people we didn't know. So yes, this holiday hasn't been one of our winners.

Thinking to be mature and to strike out on our own, Dan and I tried earlier to make a reservation at a favorite beach bed and breakfast, but this was sold out weeks ago. Secretly we both hoped to have our daughter and her girl friend with us. While at first I felt deflated by our daughter's news, I have since recovered. I have decided to go beyond my illusive desire for community and family and to simply accept what I am given. Dan and I deserve a fine dinner with desert, wine and all the trimmings, and so we shall create one. Our cooking plans have commenced, to be accompanied by elegant place settings and candles, background music, and later activities such as hiking, movies, literary readings aloud. No doubt we could have searched for a place to invite ourselves, but for this year this feels right.

What the empty nest has given me is a compassionate understanding of how our American holidays are all about the “ideal” family, when this ideal is rarely met. Without children and their easy acceptance of magic and wonder, Winter Solstice has taken on greater spiritual importance to me than Christmas, which has become deeply crass and commercial. I don't want to become bah humbug about the winter holidays but I do want them to be more accessible to all, single, unmarried, Gay, straight, Native, non-traditional family gatherings. And I want to redefine love and gratitude this Thanksgiving.

I want to give thanks for being in a loving relationship for over thirty years. And what I want to remember is we raised a child to become an incredible and compassionate young woman, but we also raised ourselves to become giving, wiser, more humble human beings. We had a partnership before our daughter was born, and we have that partnership back again. We have helped each other grow up and we will continue to help each other become elders.

I give thanks for my daughter. That she made it through her turbulent teens and that she had support and positive resources for her “coming out” years. I give thanks she is a solid, mature human being with awesome people and navigating the world skills. I give thanks she is in a healthy, loving relationship. I simply give thanks for who she is: herself.

I may not always believe I have friends (this coming from my over-protective childhood) but I do. I have cultivated an attachment to a group of women who are thoughtful, sensitive, spiritual and caring. For all of them I am in deepest gratitude. They make me see myself as I might not see me - as whole and real.

I give thanks for the town I live in where people work damn hard for human rights and the acceptance of diversity and justice. Where many try to live sustainably through food gardens, biking and energy conservation. I give thanks my town is surrounded by Mother Earth's bounty: the oceans are in one direction, the mountains in another. Precious old growth trees encircle us and the seasons (including our abundant rain) replenish us. We are lucky to be living where we do.

What I have learned through the years here in the Pacific Northwest is the definition of family is a wider one. Family means community: neighbors, strangers walking down the streets, our own children and the children of others, students and their teachers, co-workers, friends. We all have similar needs and wants for communication, caring, shelter and vocation.

We are not alone this Thanksgiving.

© 2012