Thankgiving's Peculiar Grief

The temperatures have turned cool and comfortable. New orange and yellow colors have begun to show themselves in the trees. Jeans are the wardrobe of the day. And all around me there are pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins. It is the emergence of my favorite season. Fall.

Already you can hear folks referring to the coming holiday season. Halloween, with all its frightening finery never seems to be included and I suppose for good reason. I love the way the sunshine has changed, too. The fall sun is softer, shyer somehow. So even the court where I live has a more dreamy lighting scheme.

I’ve put out the fall placemats—obnoxious neon orange plastic covered with a harvest of smiling pumpkins. There’s a candy corn candle on my table, along with a small ceramic bear dressed like a mummy standing next to a gravestone candle holder. In the living room, there’s a fall floral arrangement. And on the sliding glass doors there are window cling leaves and pumpkins that the girls put up.

I relish the rebirth of fall each year, even though the fall colors are a sign that the trees will lose their leaves and winter will come. I enjoy fall through most of the month of October. But eventually I have to face one of the days where I can’t forget I’m divorced. Much of the time I don’t have to think about it. There’s one more helpful adult in the house, and we get along with him really well. But even the beautiful arrangement we have worked out among us takes a back seat every other year. In divorce speak, this means that Morgan’s holiday time must be fairly divided.

Thanksgiving is coming, and I don’t have Morgan this year. My favorite holiday is tainted by grief, the reality of a divorce, and the separation of young sisters.

I love that Thanksgiving is all food and football without the pressure of gifts and elaborate decorations. I love that the table is laden with the year’s finest carbohydrates and for a day I can forget that they are not my friends. I love to see my nieces and nephews and step into their lives for a day. I love that my brothers have families to share their time with, and I love my Green-family famous cranberry cream cheese pie.

But this year when I sit down in the midst of family, my own will be incomplete. My 11-year-old will be missing because it’s Bob’s turn to take her to Pennsylvania to see his family. It’s fair, but it’s still painful. And it’s a reminder of the brokenness of years past. The day is incomplete without my Morgan. And it feels wrong to be away from her. I suppose that in years to come it’s possible that one or both girls might be elsewhere on Thanksgiving or (gasp) Christmas. Boyfriends will appear and covet their time. Trips with college friends will be more convenient on the long holiday weekend. And one day the girls may have to decide between their husbands’ families and ours. But all of that is down the road. When your oldest is 11, you still think she’ll show up, her smooth face lovely behind tiny glasses.

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Our divorce agreement specifies that Morgan will spend two nights a week at her dad’s house. Years ago, she used to do that. Now Bob’s work schedule is such that he goes to work around 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning, sometimes earlier. He works his overtime on the front half of the day so that he’s available to pick up Morgan and sometimes Kelsey from school. So she really can’t spend the night there comfortably. (What would be the point of having her up that early? She’d be miserable.) And anyway, Bob is often here in the evenings, so she’s not getting that much less time with him.

Our divorce agreement also specifies that Bob will pay 2/3 of Morgan’s extra expenses and I’ll pay 1/3. We’ve never stuck to that agreement either. Originally, when I was a single mom making less money, the 2/3–1/3 division seemed fair. But from the very beginning, we’ve split things 50/50—school tuition, orthodontic work, dance, and oboe.

I think the only items we pay attention to in that damn agreement are that she should be with Bob on Father’s Day and with me on Mother’s Day and that we need to make equitable arrangements on the holidays, which brings us to Thanksgiving. Every other year she goes with Bob to visit his folks. Every other year I decide how I feel about the holiday season based on whether it’s the year I “get her.”

Christmas is different. Because I’ve never wanted to deny Morgan her father, we have Bob over to our home every Christmas morning to make things as normal as possible. It was an adjustment at first. But it was worth it, because we give Morgan gifts from all three parents—Chris, Bob, and myself. I make a special holiday breakfast each year. We read Luke 2 and the kids act out the story using a child’s nativity set. Then we set about the long process of opening gifts. We’re that family that opens things one at a time so everyone can appreciate the gift. We get refills of coffee, we sneak another orange roll, we relax. In the evening Bob usually goes to a friend’s house, and we go to Chris’s parents for dinner. On the 26th each year, Morgan and Bob head to PA to celebrate Christmas there, and Chris and I take Kelsey to Ocean City to spin down after the busyness that Christmas brings.

If you’ve read my posts at all, you know we have a pretty awesome thing going on at my place. We’ve worked it out so that our little stew pot of a family is palatable nearly all the time. But there are still consequences to the divorce. There is still grief. I don’t begrudge Bob his trips to see his family for the holidays. Not at all. I just grieve that it means I won’t see Morgan. I grieve for Kelsey who has to hear the explanation about why her sister is going away this year. I grieve for Morgan who will be without her mother on the fourth Thursday of November.

These are the moments that remind you of the massive internal earthquake that divorce causes. There aren’t any visible quakes anymore. But inside, in that private self that you rarely share, the cracks are still visible. On Thanksgiving, I’ll feel every one.

Dancing with the In-Laws

“We have an announcement to make.” Chris’s mother Barbara spoke at the very beginning of her birthday dinner at Carrabba’s. That got my attention. What could it be? a vacation property? a trip? Barbara is not one for announcements.

“We have officially adopted Bob.” She smiled, and we all laughed, including Bob who was sitting to Barbara’s left.

Let me back up. A few days ago, Chris’s father called to invite us out to dinner in honor of Barbara’s birthday. Great idea. And the fact that Don called us meant he also intended to pick up the tab. A very nice gesture for a family on a budget. When Chris called his father back to tell him we were available on Barbara’s actual birthday, Don said that of course, Bob was invited and welcome. We didn’t have to ask. Also understood was that Don would treat Bob to dinner, too.

Chris’s parents have met Bob before. The first time I can remember was a few years ago when Chris’s parents came to our church to see Morgan in a small pageant. My parents and Bob were there, too, and afterward we all went to Pizza Hut for lunch. Bob was seated near Don and Barbara, and from my end of the table I could see that things were going swimmingly. Bob has three groups where he totally shines—older folks, little kids, and small animals. (Perhaps our marital problems could be traced back to the fact that I am not in any of those three groups, but that is another essay entirely.) Well, he shone that day with the older folks. Later, Barbara told me how much she’d enjoyed talking with him. I was relieved. I wasn’t quite sure how they’d feel . . . her son is married to a divorced woman, except that the ex-husband is still around. Would she think it’s fair? Would she think I’m using Chris? Would she worry I was still involved with Bob? Would she think we’re just weird? Thankfully, none of the above.

We are blessed that Chris’s family has embraced Bob as a member of our family in the same way that we have. In fact, this past year we spent a week at Fenwick Island in a gorgeous house we shared with Chris’s mom and dad, Chris’s brother, girlfriend and son, and Bob. It wasn’t our idea to invite him. It was Don and Barbara’s. Ten of us plus one small Lhasa apso. Bob was able to take off part of the week and join us. We left the day before Father’s Day, so at the beach we were able to celebrate with all the fathers present. If Don and Barbara felt differently about Bob, Morgan wouldn’t have been with her dad on Father’s Day.

One thing that I’ve realized, especially lately, is that a blended family, especially one that still involves an ex-spouse, extends way beyond the nuclear family. We have three sets of grandparents. What if an older generation doesn’t want to make nice? What if they aren’t “into” the whole thing? We certainly don’t have a traditional arrangement over here.

My parents are used to seeing Bob at my home when they come over for the kids’ birthdays. They met Bob in 1991 just like I did. So they’ve know him a long time. My brothers are used to seeing him, too. In a previous post, I wrote about how Bob and I went to see my younger brother race this past season.

And Bob’s mom and stepdad (his dad was killed in a tragic hunting accident in 1980) have extended their acceptance of our arrangement to Kelsey, our four-year-old. Once so far Kelsey has been to Pennsylvania with Bob and Morgan to visit Morgan’s Grammy and Pop Pop. She had a wonderful time. And Jan, Bob’s mom, has said that she is welcome to come again. In fact, the weekend that she visited them was Chris’s and my anniversary. It was perfect. Chris and I drove to Solomon’s Island, MD, and ate dinner at CD Café. On the way back we stopped in Prince Frederick for the night. I remember being on the phone with Jan from the hotel. It was a riot. I had called them to check in. I think what I wanted was to get the phone call checked off my list so I could not be disturbed for the rest of the night. I was, after all, alone in a hotel room with my husband. I’d had about two glasses of wine, it was my anniversary, you do the math. So there I am sitting on the bed while Chris is in the armchair with that look on his face (patient, slightly amused, ready for me to get off the phone), talking to Bob’s mom who is explaining to me that she’d never want to take the place of Chris’s parents but that if Kelsey wanted to call them Grammy and Pop Pop, too, that would be just fine with her.

And over the years, Jan has acknowledged Kelsey by sending little gifts home at Christmas. This past year, she sent home a small Easter basket for both girls. I feel a lump in my throat when I think about what Jan and other grandparents spare my kids when they treat them as equals. We don’t have to say, “You don’t get Easter candy from so-and-so because you aren’t actually her granddaughter.” The girls don’t have to remember fractured family trees. They just get to enjoy a treat together.

When Bob and I separated, I had promised him that we would still be raising Morgan together. Our problems were between us. And they were never about him not being a good father. I never, never wanted to limit Morgan’s access to him. And even as I write this, I know there are many women who can’t make the same choice. And I feel for them. Their lives are much harder than mine. Being friends with your ex is a blessing, but it’s also a luxury that many women can’t have for reasons of safety and sanity.

And so there we sat around the table at Carrabba’s. Don, Barbara, Chris, his older brother Mike, Morgan, Kelsey, Bob, and myself. More and more this is what gatherings with Chris’s family looks like. In fact, Bob is around more than Chris’s brother Mike who lives hours north in New Jersey.

There’s always some skepticism from folks, and I don’t blame them. How could Chris be this understanding? How could he not mind this extra guy always hanging around? It’s hard to explain. And every so often, I ask him, “Is this really OK?” (I asked more in the beginning.) Now, our lives have a rhythm together. Chris knows the things I can’t write about in a book. He knows the details . . . all of them. And because he’s such an amazing, highly evolved human being, he isn’t threatened. Sure, there are times I wonder what other people think—a pointless exercise. Then I just go back to the amazing, intricate dance for which we’re still learning the steps.