The Hole in my Holiday

Hello dear reader, I have a confession, and it’s fifty three years in the making. I hate Thanksgiving. I always have. Please don’t interpret that to mean I hate being grateful. I frequently reflect upon what I am grateful for.

“Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

Here’s how my epiphany came about. Recently a friend who is working out a custody agreement with their ex partner reached out to me with questions. My answers didn’t seem to satisfy this person, and they said, “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

Comedian Dane Cook calls remarks like these a form of mental terrorism. “A Tic-Tac size comment that is a detonator that goes deep into your cerebellum and at some point, three days later, thirty days later, it’s going to explode, rotting you from within.”

My friend didn’t say this to me to make my brain explode, but sometimes a random remark will, in fact, be the guiding green laser light that illuminates the trip wire pointing to the grenade lodged deep in your subconscious.

” I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

I do understand, from the bottom of my heart. It’s why I hate Thanksgiving.

Allow me to explain. First, as a writer, I treasure words. There is a word for spouses who have divorced. ‘Divorcee.’ But for children of divorced parents, there is no special terminology, other than ‘they come from a broken home.’ I think that should change, so I am coining the word myself. The suffix, ‘ling’ means, ‘One connected with or having the quality of,’ ‘young, small, or minor one.’ As a goose has a gosling, a little miniature version that has the qualities of its parent, I think we children of divorce should be called, “Divorcelings.” Some might argue that the children were never married, thus unable to have the quality of its parent. I disagree. When parents are divorced, their ‘quality’ is often ‘broken.’ Divorcelings follow suit.

Second, I thoroughly despise custody battles. I hated being part of one. I have literally stood before a judge and been asked, “Who do you want to live with? Mommy or Daddy?” I can’t even describe the exquisite agony of being put into that position. That question tore my tiny fractured heart into even more shreds of divided loyalty. There were no guardian ad litems then, no court appointed special advocates for divorcelings. No neutral party to look out for us, so emotional damage was par for the course. As was customary back then, mothers received the lion’s share of custody, and mine was no different. It was crushing for me to lose touch with my father so thoroughly, and with the judge’s seal of approval, no less.

The judge had arranged for holidays to be with my mother. My father received the leftovers. He was granted the day after holidays. Case in point, Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was not a peaceful day for me. Nor was it a day of reflection of my blessings. It was another painful reminder of the hole in my holiday. My fractured family.

Thanksgiving was a day when I was driven an hour from home ( I hate car rides) to an aunt’s home overflowing with people ( I am noise sensitive) to be with relatives who smoked indoors ( I’m allergic so I always came home with tonsillitis) so I could be called ‘turkey’ over and over again by well meaning, playful uncles. Turkeys are equated with being stupid and foolish birds, and I felt incredibly foolish back then. My aunt’s home was a nuclear family. Those cousins had their dad there. Meanwhile, I prayed every night for my parents to reconcile and remarry until I finally understood that God wasn’t going to answer that prayer in the affirmative. You would think that the fact that both my parents remarried the second the ink on the divorce decree was dry would have helped me to figure out life, but no. I was only six then. I felt like a complete moron.

Years passed and I had children of my own and we created our own Thanksgiving traditions. No one wanted the usual turkey and trimmings and I was VERY supportive of this rebellion of what I viewed as enforced gluttony. We chose pizza instead. My inner divorceling felt empowered.

Finally this year’s Thanksgiving brought that remark from my friend. The remark detonated last night while I held my three year old granddaughter who was sobbing for her mommy who lives far away and visits her only twice a month. My granddaughter is a divorceling. In her case, one broken home has led to two healthier homes. That was not the case for me. As I rocked and soothed my granddaughter until her sobs quieted, I stroked her hair and told her, ” I know, holidays can be so hard.”

I cried similar tears later that night after she went home with her daddy. I realized that I had never had a Thanksgiving with my father until I was in my 40’s and it only happened once. Thanksgiving is supposedly about gratitude for our blessings. I only got to see my dad on “Black Friday.” It’s an odd hyper shopping day, a day when marketers convince shoppers that something is missing in their life. The irony was not lost on me, then or now.

If anyone understands the barbed wire pain of a custody battle, it’s a divorceling. If anyone understands feeling a gaping hole in a holiday, it’s a divorceling.

But I do understand gratitude. “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18

I am thankful my heavenly father is present at every meal, every holiday, every moment of my life. So if you are feeling a hole in your holidays, dear reader, know that He is with you. You are truly loved.

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