Family Thanksgiving? (Make-up Post 5)

Hmm, Thanksgiving. It’s a family holiday that always had mixed results. This Thanksgiving has been strange with my mother in counseling for depression, my father estranged because he’s always been that way, and with my brother going through a possible divorce it really hasn’t left a whole lot of room for family get togethers. I’ve never been quiet able to figure out my mom and why she is the way she is. It just seems like she functions better with space than with people around her. It’s strange when you get to the point in your life where you prefer to be alone that with or around other people. My father is another story all together. Talk about non-caring. He’s completely uninterested in anything with regard to what my mother, brother, or I were doing or going through after my mom separated from him back in second grade. He’s given trickling payments of child support and little if any support except in times of crisis. I would say he says to enjoy if not relish his ability to keep my mom under his financial thumb. Beyond that it seems we simply exchange conversation when we see each other being more like estranged friends meeting awkwardly at random rather than father and son. My brother is a prime example of my father’s behavior and my grandmother’s superficiality. Little if any contact with me or his mother until the day of Thanksgiving, then only a brief appearance with light conversation to acknowledge his existence to his mother so she doesn’t think he’s fallen off the face of the earth. Contact with me non-existent. He was slighted some time ago by my previous boyfriend and made to bear the truth of his self to his wife. I imagine he holds me responsible in some measure to his current state, but I believe sincerely in personal responsibility for actions that you take regardless of reason. I don’t think its something he’ll forgive me for nor do I ask for it. When we do meet its by accident coming and going from my mom’s house as he exchanges a few trite choice words and speeds off to his imagined busyness that prevents him from making real conversation to his brother. Sad considering we have a lot in common on several levels, but we always seems to superficially discuss the happenings of games. I’m not sure what I expected for this Thanksgiving. I didn’t really even think about going over to see my mom and I held off tell sunset until calling her to come over. Stealing over in the night we sat and talked. I ate Turkey of course with gravy, candied carrots, cheese potatoes, rolls, and two slivers of pie. One was pecan the other pumpkin, by far my favorite of all pies. Apparently, to the amazement of my mother, my brother had shown up and had dinner with my mom. They made light discussion, but nothing very personal as he brushed aside any question he didn’t want to answer. My father had then come over after he’d left and ate with my mom. And finally then I came over, with my father walking the dog, and we ate together alone. Its strange having four people at a Thanksgiving dinner and having no more than two people dine at a time. Hopefully next year will change that, but I don’t hold out hope. We seem to be drawn, as a family, inexorably apart and I see little that could correct this in the future, but perhaps one day the holiday of Thanksgiving will deliver its promise of hope and reconciliation. Until then we will continue to dine separately on the day families were meant to sit and break bread.