Growing up with split parents is a tough thing to navigate for younger kids. For most of my life, my parents have been apart. In fact, I truly don’t think I can recall a time in my life when they were officially together. But one of the biggest struggles growing up this way… the holidays.
For a while, we had the struggle of scheduling. The question of who had the kids for thanksgiving that year, and then the same issue when it was time for Christmas. Remembering who had who the year prior to try and keep it even and fair.
Me and my sisters spent multiple years during the holidays arguing about who had a location preference. I normally would give the vote to be with our dad on Christmas morning and spend Thanksgiving with our mom. We would see both parents for Christmas anyway, and although I was, and sometimes still am, a picky eater, my mom’s cooking on Thanksgiving is too hard to pass up. (It also beats microwaved mashed potatoes and store-bought ham… which I don’t eat)
Both of my parents weren’t too well off financially, but my father was constantly moving and constantly between jobs. I’d like to think he tried his best to see us on his weekends and tried extra hard during the holidays, but with the holidays being right around the corner, I came to a slight realization. I haven’t spent Christmas, or Christmas Eve, with both sides of my family in a really long time.
When you’re little and other kids hear that your parents are split, you get used to hearing the joke “Oh, double everything!”. And while it was true for a while, that joke just doesn’t hit the way it used to. Now, most people know not to make jokes. We’ve matured and can understand that we don’t know the inside workings of everybody’s family situation. And as hard as it is sometimes to accept that you now have to spend time away from part of your family, it’s harder to accept going back to having one Christmas.
While it’s partially a choice I’ve made in the matter, that doesn’t make it suck less. Even during the non-holiday weekends with my dad, bouncing back and forth from house to house, or not going to my dad’s at all and waiting for him anyway, was more taxing than I think I realized it was. It got to a point where I felt like I had to be the terrible person who dragged my little sister away from the window with her weekend bag in tow. Consoling her because she couldn’t comprehend why he didn’t show, or better yet why he couldn’t at least call us to say he wasn’t coming.
Holidays are hard.
Holidays are so freaking hard.
Don’t get me wrong, I have some really amazing memories of white Christmases and gingerbread houses and sneaking out of my room to try and catch our parents putting gifts under the tree after I had grown skeptical (I caught them and didn’t say anything for two years). But through all of that, there were also Christmases when I sat in my dad’s house, in a cold room, silent so as to not disturb his housemates, with minimal food in the fridge.
And unfortunately, those are the Christmases that stick a little harder.
But this year it’s another singular Christmas. Maybe this will be the year that blocks out some of the bad.