Thursday, December 31, 2015

Beginnings and endings

Beginnings and endings

Reminiscing today caused me to have one of those epiphanies where when you think about it afterwards you feel foolish for not jumping to ithe same conclusion earlier…

Growing up my favorite holidays were always Halloween and New Year's eve – – I always assumed that it was because for one you just dress up and be whoever you wanted and for the other it was all about new opportunities.

It wasn't until today through a kind of random conversation that I realized that the reason those are my favorite holidays is because of my childhood. See growing up with my parents' divorce, they fought about everything involving me and my brother. Every holiday was split down the middle – – Christmas breakfast with mom Christmas dinner with dad,  thanksgiving with Nana and later Thanksgiving with my french grandparents. Don't eat too much… Don't talk about your other presents… How dare you like one thing more than the other?

 Add to this my stepfather's extended family definitely made no effort to make us feel like we belong and my dad's family treated us like we adopted stepchildren we were… gifts for everyone but us sometimes, not making enough food to include us, always missing out on the family photos…So unintentionally or not they did things that made us feel bad

But no one ever fought over Halloween and New Year's… Neither cared about trick-or-treating or dressing us up and neither really wanted to watch us when they want to be up late and to seeing the new year 

It was the one holiday where there was no fighting, no awkward family moments, and was just simple. We got a large pizza and a bottle of soda and nonalcoholic side--we were left to watch movies like Grease 2 or Gremlins or total request live as late as we wanted on NYE

it was the happiest holidays we had and I'm not sure why I blocked that out except that explains a whole lot

No comments: