Thanksgiving as an Estranged Daughter

Family photo provided by author, taken sometime in the 1990s.

It’s Thanksgiving. I slept in with my sister in her Washington DC basement apartment until 10:00am and now it’s 11:45 and we still need to walk to the store for some ingredients.

There’s no deadline. No rush. No schedule.

This is not like it was at mom’s house.

By now, we’d be running around and doing the time-honored dance of side dishes coming into and out of the oven on an impeccable schedule. Someone would be organizing crackers into attractive rows with a variety of cheese balls in the middle of a platter. The house would be so warm that we could write something crude in the fog on the kitchen windows to surprise mom and make her laugh later. If she was in a good mood.

Thanksgiving is an event for just the two of us now. We started the “Sibsgiving” tradition last year, the first year we had both cut off contact with our parents. I brought a partner and we had a three person meal and leftovers for days.

This year, it’s just us — and it’s the first time we’ve had one on one time together in years. We’re taking our time, enjoying the day off work, listening to music, and wondering how our grief folds into our celebration.

The holidays as an estranged adult child are weird, because I love the idea of not having to call everyone I’m related to in order…