Thanksgiving Solitude

Home Sweet Home

 We didn't do a big family dinner this Thanksgiving. Each of my kids did separate dinners just for their own households. I spent the day with Frankie: cooked scrambled eggs for breakfast and heated up a turkey pot pie for dinner. Frankie enjoyed sharing. Chatted on the phone and online with members of my family, and watched some BritBox -- my new favorite streaming source. In my family, we're taking this disease very seriously and all are trying hard not to get infected. It means doing things differently this year. But it really has been fine.

We change our traditions, we make new ones.

I've read a lot about senior citizens who are sad and lonely at missing the big family gatherings this year. I am not one of those. I wasn't sad at all. In fact, I really enjoyed not cooking a turkey for the first time in 42 years. I enjoyed being lazy and watching a lot of television and spending a little time outdoors with my Frankie on a beautiful fall day.

I grew up in a crowded household of eight children and parents somehow fitting into a 4-bedroom, 1-bath home. I went directly from home into marriage and in a few years began adding children. I would be 60 years old before I would know how it is to live entirely alone. I relished it. I love my family deeply. But I soon learned the beauty and peace to be found in solitude--something I had never known before that time. I remember at that time I wrote an essay about aloneness vs. loneliness. The former does not necessarily equate to the latter.

I understand not everyone sees aloneness as I do, and they crave human contact and association. But years of working from home really prepared me for the substitute of online, distanced communication -- both with co-workers and even my family.

These months of distancing due to Covid-19 have not been difficult for me. I do see my kids and friends once in awhile. In the summer time we had lunches on the patio. Sometimes one or another of them will drop by and we visit but keep our distance across a large room. And now I drive my grandsons to and from school one day a week (wearing masks, utilizing hand sanitizer, etc.). My monthly movie group has resorted to watching movies streaming online and then following with a Zoom online meetup to discuss. It works very well thanks to a local theater that streams indie and foreign and other popular movies of the sort we like. This all feels like sufficient contact for now. Christmas and New Year will come and go and we'll all survive.

 Next year, Thanksgiving will be different. Now that my kids have successfully done a dinner on their own, we will be able to share duties, as a family, putting on the dinner. I don't see myself doing it all myself ever again. And, if all goes to plan, I will have sold my house and moved to a new smaller place by then, too. I'm dreaming of that change--but more about that another time.

Things will eventually change in 2021, and we'll be back to close personal visits, meals, gatherings. And I'll love it when that happens. But I'm still going to enjoy a few more months of some precious solitude. I choose to think of this time as an opportunity I never had growing up or while raising my family. I will embrace the time I have for this.