Thanksgiving caused the break-up
"Chad," apron strings, and no more trying to recreate the past
During college, a boyfriend accused me of being tied to my mom’s apron strings. This occurred after I reneged on tentative plans to go home with him for Thanksgiving. My sister was newly home from an 18-month church mission to Brazil, and I decided I wanted one last Thanksgiving with my family in Montana.
You see, at that point, I think both Chad1 and I thought we would be married by the next year. Even if this did involve me overlooking character flaws like the fact that he owned a tarantula. Or that, in the house he shared with roommates, he enforced a wintertime thermostat setting of 55 degrees. I assure you he had no character flaws to overlook in me.
Given our dating trajectory, it seemed like a minor thing to me to have one last holiday at home. Was I wrong! Our beef about Thanksgiving proved to be the beginning of the end. But not before Chad, for Christmas, gave me an expensive Eddie Bauer sweater I didn’t love. After the break-up, I exchanged it for a backpack.
The thing about his accusation was that it was off-base. I love my mom dearly, and she does wear aprons with great frequency, but our relationship has never been like that. You’ve never met a less overbearing mother in your life. That said, while he was wrong about me being tied to my mom’s apron strings, I may have been a little too attached to my family and our traditions in general.
Like most people, I’m a mixed-bag of strengths and weaknesses. Because it’s more fun to talk about the former than the latter, here are a handful of the gifts God gave me:
I am a confident parker. Bring on the parallel parking.
I have a, ah, gifted imagination which keeps life interesting. Search my Substack for ‘imagination’ or ‘gift of an imagination’ and you’ll find lots of stories.
I am very sentimental and prone to nostalgia. Case in point: last week’s essay about South Dakota.
It is that last gift that kept me clinging probably too hard and too long to traditions. I was like a fiddler on the roof singing my own version of “Tradition, TRADITION. Tradition, TRADITION!” from especially the holiday rooftops. I liked for holidays to be the way they’d always been, always trying to capture the feelings of especially Thanksgivings and Christmases past. Sometimes it even worked, but the pesky thing about feelings is they are hard to manufacture on command.
Sure, traditions had changed in some ways due to small life events like my siblings getting married and having kids. Because the structural pieces of my personal circumstances hadn’t changed much (no husband, no kids), my main holiday tradition involved returning home to my parents’. These Montana holidays typically included at least one sibling’s family, and—yippee!—many of our usual traditions.
As much as I enjoyed these trips, each year I’d think, “Maybe NEXT year I’ll be at my boyfriend or fiance’s home for this holiday, or even married.” Years ago, I almost spent Christmas with one serious boyfriend (this one did NOT have a tarantula), but opted for New Years instead. That was the right call. Other than that particular holiday season, my romantic relationships never coincided with Thanksgiving and Christmas, so—over the river and through the woods—to my parents house I’d annually go.
But my leap out of corporate and into The Wild (something I write about in my very-soon-to-be-released book, Dear Fellow Dreamer!) turned into a leap out of nearly everything familiar, including many traditions I’ve loved. It ended up being a leap into making something new of my life in general which includes the holidays.
The first Thanksgiving, fourteen months after leaving corporate and nearly a year into traveling full-time, I spent in Georgia. The country. Chad would’ve very much approved of the temperature in buildings. This Thanksgiving unseated my formerly most memorable one, and was an adventure involving Poland, a U.S. embassy, a Turkish fight club, a boat AND SO MUCH MORE.
I wrote about it in this piece about holidays looking different than they used to. Hundreds of my new readers missed this one and might enjoy reading it:
When Holidays Look Different Than They Used To
You’ve heard the phrase, “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?” You probably haven’t heard the related question, “If a holiday looks different than it’s always looked, does it still count as a holiday?”
Last Thanksgiving was a bit like a scene from a Hallmark movie. My aunt and uncle, for whom I’d been housesitting, relayed a Thanksgiving dinner invitation for the three of us from their neighbors. When she asked whether I’d like that, I shocked even myself by choosing that over a cozy day of feasting and watching football. “Sure, let’s have a scene with the neighbors,” I said, and we did.
I knew this couple had two sons who would be there, but no one told me they were handsome, interesting, and kind—and that one was near my age. Things went so well that he and I even held hands. For forty seconds, during grace where we all held hands around the table. There was some light flirting and he was enthusiastic about my apple and pumpkin pies, allaying my earlier fears that I had ruined the heroes of the Thanksgiving meal. All we needed was a Christmas tree farm and for one of us to be an anal corporate executive to complete the screenplay I may write and submit to Hallmark.
Thanksgiving this year also looks different. Most of my immediate family will be in town for the weekend. For The Dinner itself, though, I’m taking my apple and pumpkin pies on the road to a nearby aunt’s home. She mentioned there will be an eclectic group of guests, which happens to be my favorite kind of gathering. I’m delighted to fit immediate and extended family, new friends, and sleeping in my own bed in the same holiday weekend.
For this imaginative, sentimental, capable parker, it’s not been a painless road to change traditions. To loosen those apron strings so to speak. Or have the apron strings loosened for me, since not all of it has been my own choosing. It’s just that, like it or not, traditions do change no matter how hard you try to cling to them. And it’s the dratted inevitability of change which propels us into new chapters and new traditions. For that we should all be really grateful—I know I finally am.
…if we spend too much time recreating the past, we never get to enjoy the present, or create the future we want.
I still love my family and I love my memories of our traditions, but I’m learning to embrace new and evolving traditions as I so-graciously allow life and holidays to change. I’m clinging less hard to trying to recreating what once was, since, if we spend too much time recreating the past, we never get to be surprised by the present, or create the future we want.
It’s doubtful that Chad understood all this when he made his apron-string comment to me, and we’ll maybe never know if he understands it now. If you ever happen to run into him, please do NOT tell him about the sweater, but DO feel free to find out what he’s discovered on this subject, and to let him know that I’m no longer tied to the apron strings of the past. And feel to let me know in return if he still sets the temperature to 55 degrees.
How has a different sort of holiday been a good thing for you?
Isn’t life cool, and aren’t people interesting? See you in the next one…
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If you’ve been with me for any length of time, you’ll recognize Chad as the generic name I use for most guys from my past. I find it funny. You can use the search feature on More to Your Life for other “Chad” stories.