Thanksgiving, like many other holidays, is a time of family gathering for celebration and reconnecting. However, I realize and understand that this is not always the reality for every person out there. There are some without any family at all, and there are some who are forced to celebrate twice a year or switch families between the years. Personally, I fall into the latter.
For a brief summary, my Thanksgiving includes a double-hitter. My grandmother died in 2012, which separated my father’s side of the family. In 2013, my parents officially divorced. So I went from a big family gathering at my grandmother’s house in 2011, to a more depressing household gathering in 2012, to a “Thanksgiving is with Dad on odd years.” Furthermore, messy divorces do not help these kinds of situations.
While my Thanksgivings have increasingly progressed as time passed on with Friendsgiving and attending my boyfriend’s family’s Thanksgiving traditions, there is not a single Thanksgiving that goes by where I long for 2011. Every year, I reminisce on the “normalized” family gatherings where everyone shared responsibilities of cooking and bringing food. There was never enough seating, so other members stood or moved to different parts of the home. The football game that everyone gathered to watch. Being a child, I would play with my relatives in the yard.
During my pre-adulthood years, I dreaded having to spend Thanksgiving with one side of the family on odd years and the other side on even years. It did not help that half the family meant gatherings without my aunt, uncle, and cousins or gatherings with other Filipino families. Sure, I tried to make the most of the season with whom I had to share it with that year. But, I still longed for that “normalized” Thanksgiving feast. I still longed for my life to be the way it used to. And to this day, I long for a family of my own to recreate those 2011 kinds of memories with.
For those out there who know how this situation feels, I wish you all the best for Thanksgiving. Hopefully your situations are in a better place, or you have created a new Thanksgiving life for yourself. I also wish you all the best for all those other holidays that fall under the same double-celebration or odd-even year spell. I know it’s not easy to deal with, but always remember that you’re never alone.
For everyone, no matter what your situation is like, I wish a magical Turkey Season to you all!
hcxo