Thanksgiving

The holiday is amoung us and let me tell you it has had me stressed! I'm not stressed b/c I have a whole lot of cooking to do or to help out doing, although I am contributing my pie to my mom's dinner. I'm stressing b/c ever since I was a little girl I have had multiple Thanksgivings and as I got older and started dating those Thanksgivings multiplied.  You see my parents divorced when I was young, like 5 or 6, and ever since then I have had to go back and forth depending on who's year it was.  When I started driving I had to go to both on the same day usually around the same time. Mom always did early lunch (say 11) and dad did mid lunch (say 1:30). Which if you're doing the math is not much time to let the first meal digest.  There is a positive to this, usually at Thanksgiving my mom will travel 3 hours to her mom's house and if this happens then I only have one dinner to go to and that is of course my grandmother's house with my mom.  Not b/c I don't love my dad but just b/c I get to see my grandmother and that whole side of the family (which is HUGE, my mom is one of 9!).

Well this year my mom can't afford to make the trip to my grandmother's house 3 hours away(which makes me sad b/c I really wanted to see her, guess I'll go one weekend before Christmas) so this means....you guessed it 2 Thanksgivings! And I have been stressing about this for MONTHS now. So much so that I have had a monster headache that no pain pill could cure (trust me I tried) until I talked to my mom yesterday. You see the real stresser is that my mom lives 2 1/2 hours from me now so I can't just go to her house then my dad's and back, if I go to her house, I'm there for the night.  And this is the second Thanksgiving without my Mimi (my dad's mom) so I want to be there. I feel I should mention this little side note, my parents don't get along and haven't since the divorce over 20 years ago....so hence my stress. I want to be with both of them and please both of them b/c I geniunely love them.  If I go to my dad's I can see my sister who is a Freshman at the University of Southern Mississippi and if I go to my mom's I can see my brother who is a Senior in high school.  So what to do, especially when dad tells me lunch is at 1:30.

Very calmly last week I asked my mom if we could do dinner instead of lunch (this would allow me to go to dad's and travel to her house to spend the night) and I got a response of...sure....now I know I'm reading more into this response b/c I think my mom is upset (I have a huge problem with doing this) so I start to freak out and panic.  Well I really shouldn't have b/c when my mom said "sure" she really meant "sure, that's cool with me". Whew!!!

I talked to mom yesterday and she is perfectly happy with doing dinner and totally excited that myself, my sister-in-law and my brother will all be spending the night with her, even if it's just one night.  So this revelation has lifted a HUGE burden off of my shoulders that I didn't realize I had placed there. Not my parents but myself! By focusing so much on what would please them I didn't realize that just my presence there would please them.  As long as I'm there, they don't care who I see first.  Wow.  So now my headache has subsided and I'm actually looking forward to Thanksgiving.

I have much to be thankful for and I give thanks for it everyday, but this year will be different.

Happy Thanksgiving
Courtney :)