For many people the holidays are hard. It could be that they subconsciously avoid all the possible expectations that they could never meet with their past and present family, so they stay away or wish they could stay away. Why bother? Like a dog, they know when they are truly welcome from the heart. We know whose glad to see us, who wants us in the pictures that they’ll post of Facebook. We know who smiles to your face but is talking behind your back. For some, there is disappointments that go all the way back to childhood. I get it. Why set yourself up for more rejection or judgment?
In my family of origin (on both sides), Thanksgiving was met with little emotional thanks giving. The turkey was more carefully sliced up then the cutting comments behind each other’s back. As a kid, watching this had a profound affect on me. I couldn’t understand why my relatives were together if they didn’t like each other? My grandmother told me. “We came for you kids.” While that was a nice gesture Gram, the negative energy leading up to and after was not worth it. ‘We kids’ would have been better off woofing down turkey dinner than going off to play our kid game of ‘Battleship’ in our rooms. It would have been better then watching real ‘family cold war battleship’ played out before our eyes with silence or side ways glances. What you all wanted to say but didn't was “F-U. YOU SUNK MY BATTLESHIP!!!” For years I’d hear behind each others backs: “You made runny Jell-O. You set out cold cuts instead of making us a holiday meal! You didn’t invite me to Thanksgiving at the restaurant! You did this, you did that! You said this, you said that! Your mother this, your mother that!” REALLY, PEOPLE? I was 6 years old; I knew something was wrong in our family; and not just at the holidays. All of familial elders modeled divisive discord, gossip, and judgment to my brothers before we learned it out in the real world. There were no dishes of kindness, acceptance, love served around our holiday dinner table. There was no pleasing anyone!
To this day, many of them will go to their graves arguing for the right-to-be-right and won’t speak to each other. They would rather ‘be right than be in relationship’. Not a single one of them know how to forgive! And I have to be honest, that makes me both mad and sad. Thanks for the psychic scars, thanks for pretending to be a family when you really hated each other. My brothers and I were the bumper shock absorber of all the family discord each holiday. We felt it, making every childhood holiday tense and depleting. This probably explains my hesitancy going into the holiday season. I internally brace myself for someone being upset with me or somebody else.
I’m all about Thanksgiving. I live for the stuffing and the pumpkin pie. My favorite part is left over turkey sandwiches the-day-after with butter and pepper. Don’t ask, I have no idea why either. Maybe it’s all I have left of my childhood memory of the holiday that taste good?
I once acted like a total ass with my brother’s Mike and Rich while in AZ during Thanksgiving. We were at a restaurant and a waitress spilled an entire drink onto my brother. He was rattled and the waitress was rattled. I could see how upset my brother Mike was and the fear of a ruined gathering came flooding to my mind. Then my other brother, Rich, (not to be confused with my husband Rich) started to nag about the service of this already poor rattled waitress. I could feel my blood pressure rising from a dormant well of childhood feelings. I couldn’t scream then “BE NICE!” But I could now. I was getting pissed that our only time together was turning into the meal from hell. I just wanted my brothers to stop having bad feelings. I wanted everyone to be happy. Why? Because when they are upset, it affects me. There you have it! I want everyone to be happy! I want Norman Rockwell damn-it! So being the wise older sister, I told them all off (at the table and later in an obnoxious, self-righteous email). They don’t know what to do with me sometimes. I’m both the bossy sister and the peacemaker. I boss them into being peaceful. It’s pretty twisted.
When my husband, Rich, and I argue, our dog Fred will start running around the house barking uncontrollably. He first pretends he’s barking at something outside, but we soon figured out that Fred's just upset that we are upset. That is what I did with my brothers at the restaurant. I don’t do well when other people are angry. It bursts my carefully crafted bubble of ‘niceness’. I start internally barking and circling, panicked with the intense energy of others disappointment of me and others. This probably explains why at the core of my being, I’m a true hippy: ‘All We Need Is Love’, sang the Beatles. And if I can’t have sincere love while around others then I want to be away from everyone. I don’t want others to just be kind to me, I want them to be nice to EVERYONE at the table: No gossip, no backbiting, no snarky comments, no cold shoulder, and no defensiveness, no past shit! For the love of RINGO, let it go!
I had some clean up to do after that Thanksgiving in AZ two years ago. I was especially proud of my brother Mike and I. We sorted out our feelings through 5 emails back and forth. I felt so grown up. We didn’t cut each other off (which is what people do in my family). Mike and I gave each other permission to be scared, human, flawed, and vulnerable. We heard each other out and then moved on. Do you know that it was the first time in the history of my family that two people rationally talked things out? It was HUGE!
My brother Rich and I have some more sorting out to do (but this time it has nothing to do with that Thanksgiving visit). Rich needs to own his part, but for ‘my part’ of the present breakdown, still has everything to do with me being the bossy sister who wants peace and tries to fix her broken world. I can trace it all back to my need for everyone to just be kind to each other, to put the past aside, to love, to forgive. Yet, in life, it doesn’t work that way. We can’t control how other people feel or behave. I need to allow other people permission to just ‘be’. We each have our own pain and how we react to it is personal. This is how I react to it; I am the ‘nice police’. And it all started because of the holidays.
I miss my brother Rich very much. He’s a good guy. But we have a very complicated family that has set us up for some nuclear fusion of emotions. Our goals and personality get in the way of our desired objective for world dominance or family peace. I don’t care about being right. I just care about being in relationship!
You will always be my brother and I love you Rich. And even though on some level history is repeating itself and we can’t have Thanksgiving together, I still give thanks for you!
