Owning the holidays

I have a major bugaboo about Thanksgiving. It's never been a particularly friendly holiday for me, ironically. Started when my childhood home was damaged by fire, and water hose, and smoke, the day before Thanksgiving and caused long-lasting emotional turmoil in our family for some time thereafter.

Then there was the annual bout of strep throat that typically left me unable to eat in subsequent years (psychosomatic or not) for the Big Dinner.

The many years feeling out of place at other family's dinners when I was transplanted to the East Coast and could afford only to come home at Christmas.

The dinner with friends when we didn't understand that defrosting would require days in the refrigerator, not a bacteria-brewing day on the countertop.

My own skewed perceptions that Thanksgiving is for giant cuddly family time with extended relatives arriving and filling up the house. My actual family always consisted of two parents (still together, which is an amazing blessing), one brother, one grandparent. My dad had one sister and step-family we never saw. My mom has one brother.

Last year the kids and I visited my grandmother in the nursing home. Not quite warm and fuzzy, but important. It was my last major holiday with her before she died.

The next day I marched into an Apple store to replace my three-month-old computer because of a hot chocolate spill. I was feeling highly stressed about that and other personal matters that could not be fixed....and within moments was sobbing uncontrollably in front of the Apple sales guy.

Many of us have our own stories of unhappy holidays that didn't fulfill our expectations. Sometimes we dread the holidays because it forces us to interact with family members who don't understand us, or our choices. Or we watch nieces and nephews joyous and exuberant and cute, feeling a bit invisible because we don't yet have children of our own to celebrate with them. Or it becomes the occasion for younger sister to announce her engagement to Perfect Man. Or it simply becomes an exhausting time of shopping, wrapping and traveling with our little ones, putting Bah Humbug into our already stressful life.

Of course, some of us embrace the holidays as an opportunity to do service in the community, to show our older children about what it means to give.

And many of us LOVE the holidays, as a time to celebrate rituals with loved ones.

I'm writing today to tell you how, this year, I OWNED my Thanksgiving.

The kids and I had a few invitations to dinners. I considered hosting. My Mom -- warm and toasty with Dad and friends in Arizona -- had that "sorry" sound in her voice when she heard that we intended to stay home alone.

But what the kids and I did with our Thanksgiving is create our own ritual. We stayed in our pajamas all day. We each picked four things we wanted to do.

The list was not the usual TO DO list that usually takes over. It consisted of: craft (flying paper turkeys on a hanger), puzzle (Transformers), cooking (chicken with beer can up its butt, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, fancy bread), manicures and massage (yes, my son is still sporting his pink nails proudly), Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (all three of us cuddled together on couch with hot chocolate and popcorn), disco party (to Hedwig!), and more.

We had a three-member-family extravaganza. And it was deliriously brilliant.

And there's more: that Apple sales guy? He was part of this year's ritual as well. The kids and I made a gift basket to celebrate my store breakdown. Because since then, his cousin has been responsible for helping me get the Choice Chat podcast running smoothly, and for producing my first CD for Choice Moms, about answering the "Do I Have a Dad?" question. His brother has become my tech consultant and resident handyman. And the sales guy himself has recently become my webcast developer, currently working with me on a Choice Moms DVD about "building your support network."

OWN your rituals. Take the REINS. DO what you can. LET GO of what you can't. BUILD your network.

There is much to give thanks for, when we keep moving forward to create our own meaningful short-term and long-term communities.