As I write this, my daughter is reading my blog for the first time. She has been shamed into it because her close cousin and her step-sister both said, unprompted by me, that they read and enjoyed my blog. Heck – what they actually said was that they “loved it.” So, darling daughter has been shamed into reading it. Yippee! I’m happy to have her read it. It’ll help her understand me and know what’s going on in my life. Sometimes, the hardest people to get to read your writing are the people closest to you. I expect that my son will be the next to join the readership. And, who knows, maybe my sister, brother, husband and mother may take a look-see every now and again.
I have an abundance of family spread across the U.S. Holidays can be difficult because what you really want is for everyone you love to be together. When the children were young, I didn’t even have to consider where they’d be for the holidays because I knew they’d be with me. Now that they are grown and gone to different cities, I can no longer depend on our being together. I want to see my mother and siblings, aunts and cousins in St. Louis. My daughter wants to be in Charlotte for her baby’s first Christmas. My son and his significant other want to spend Christmas together in New York. (To be fair, he did spend Thanksgiving with me.) A part of me would like to be in Boston surrounded by the love and warmth of my own house.
But a choice had to be made and this year it is Charlotte. This turns out to be the wisest choice. My granddaughter is fighting off an illness that would have been exacerbated had she traveled. My husband is here and we are blessed that his daughter came over from Hotlanta. My cousin and his wife drove up from St. Louis. Other members of my husband’s family live in Charlotte as do a close friend and her family. So there are plenty of us around to love each other up, break bread (though I’m the only one busting any pots so far), sing carols and be prayerful.
No matter what the configuration – we are family. Through marriage and relationships new people come into the family and so the circle expands and shifts and strengthens. I am so proud of the young people in our family. They are smart, independent, upstanding, witty – actually they are funny as hell.
To be with my family is the gift I wanted most this Christmas. Thank you. Santa, for granting my wish.