You are alone for Thanksgiving. Your kids are with your ex-partner for the holiday dinner. All bets are off. That means it’s OK to make a turkey and stuffing sandwich and eat it on the couch in your pajamas by yourself. It’s OK to order a pizza with toppings your kids would hate and eat it right out of the box. It’s OK to sleep in, to say no to every invitation, or to say yes to every invitation. To watch 10 hours of television or go for a walk in the woods or go out to a friend’s house for dinner or check into a hotel with a pool and float the weekend away.
If you came to me for a recommendation, I would tell you to do a little bit of social and solo time. When you’re a single parent, time on your own doesn’t always feel like the gift people sometimes think it might be. Time on your own, especially over a big holiday weekend, can feel like a threat — a look into your future of maybe always being alone. A weekend full of what ifs swirling around in your head. What if my kids get older and don’t want to see me? What if I never meet anyone? What if I’m invisible?
I would like to tell you not to do this to yourself, because I know from experience that it doesn’t work. This wallowing, this sitting on the sofa or staying in bed and feeling sorry for yourself, is an important stage. Maybe even an unavoidable stage.
The first year my kids left to go to their dad’s for Thanksgiving, I really worked myself up into a full sulk. I imagined them all sitting around the table, my ex-family with my children, everyone content and happy and not missing my excellent stuffing or pumpkin cheesecake at all. My children acting not like themselves but instead like movie children. Combed hair, clean shirts, eating their dinner without complaint or bribes or anything. I pictured them in this life on this weekend and felt erased. Completely gone from their lives and also somehow my own.
I slept. I ordered pizza for one and lasagna for one and Dairy Queen blizzards. I watched HGTV in the middle of the day while I folded laundry on the couch. And slowly, I started to like this version of my weekend.
Slowly — over the course of several Thanksgivings — I started to let in this new bit of freedom that felt foreign to me. I didn’t have to do dishes. I didn’t have to run to the grocery store with four cranky kids for last-minute dinner rolls. I could go to a matinee and get a large popcorn of my own if I wanted. In sweat pants. I could go home and continue to do nothing if this was also something I wanted. The guilt of this made me blush to myself at first — that I could allow any joy in my heart because of their absence, as though I was negating my love for them by loving time alone.
Eventually, I stopped blushing.
I reminded myself that I spent most of my Thanksgivings building memories with my kids, and these were the weekends that sustained me. I didn’t prefer my time to myself on these holiday weekends. I missed my kids. I missed our life together, and there was even a small part of me that missed the family I thought we would be. The mom and dad, the kids, the dog. The extended family. The feasts that I figured I would feed everyone forever. The recipe box I would fill with all of my greatest holiday hits. When my kids were home for Thanksgiving, we cobbled together a very excellent facsimile of this life. I have my recipe box with my greatest holiday hits. We have our movies we watch, our card games we play. We eat dessert by the bonfire if the weather is very fine.
But I learned to love the other kind of Thanksgiving for what it was, too. An intermission. A break in my regularly scheduled programming to get up, stretch my legs, and look around for a minute. I was invited to friends’ houses for very adult dinners, where we dressed up and drank signature cocktails — a world I had forgotten existed. I walked in the woods. I went to parties or said no to parties and felt that delicious release of hours of time to myself.
I used those holiday weekends to recharge. To eat turkey and stuffing sandwiches, extra mayo, extra gravy, on the couch while I watched weepy melodramas. I cried sometimes. I wallowed. You might cry without your kids on this big weekend, too. You might wallow. I hope you do, actually.
Because on the other side of that wallowing, there is another path. And it’s really OK to want to take that path. To enjoy your kids’ absence, just for the weekend. To feel released from the pressure of making someone’s holiday weekend memorable.
This year, if you’re a single parent whose kids are gone for Thanksgiving, embrace the beauty of being a tiny bit invisible. You don’t have to make anyone’s weekend special. Not even yours.
Jen McGuire is a contributing writer for Romper and Scary Mommy. She lives in Canada with four boys and teaches life writing workshops where someone cries in every class. When she is not traveling as often as possible, she’s trying to organize pie parties and outdoor karaoke with her neighbors. She will sing Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” at least once, but she’s open to requests.
