Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday. It stems from my childhood. As a kid nearly every Thanksgiving was spent out the home I grew up in. My mom would prepare a huge meal and our immediate and extended family would be together. I have such warm, fuzzy memories of those Thanksgivings.
The last Thanksgiving that I spent at my familial home was just after I had met my (future) ex-husband. Little did I know what the next few years would have in store for me. That was 8 years ago. Since then many things have changed; I got married, I hosted my own Thanksgivings, I became a mother, I got divorced and became a single mother. Last year, was the first year that I spent Thanksgiving without my children. I dreaded the day for weeks. Ultimately, it wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated. I chose to spend the day alone, being around other families was more than I could bare at the time.
This year my children are back with me. We will be going to upstate New York to spend the holiday with family. It will be just like the Thanksgivings I remember as a child. I am so excited to build warm, fuzzy memories of Thanksgiving for my own children.
I’ve been thinking a lot of about family traditions. Before my ex and I split up we hadn’t really established too many traditions around the holidays. In the aftermath of the divorce it was hard for me to see past my grief and enjoy the holidays. But because I wanted to make the holidays a special time for the girls I put my own feelings aside and began to think about what we could do as a family to mark Thanksgiving.
I pulled out a copy of one of my favorite childhood books: Cranberry Thanksgiving. I read the book to my girls. Afterwards we baked our very own cranberry bread. Sweetie was so excited about it that the next day she brought the book to preschool to share with her class. Since then we’ve carried on that tradition. This will be the third year that we read Cranberry Thanksgiving and bake cranberry bread. Even though the girls were not with me last year for Thanksgiving we still read the book and baked the bread the day before Thanksgiving.
This year, I am most thankful for my 2 amazing girls and the memories that I have the opportunity to make with them.
