Getting Ready for Thanksgiving

We are headed into the frenzy of getting ready for our trip to MN for Thanksgiving.  I am looking forward to leaving for a few days and getting a new look on life and a new look at the world, or at viewing a different landscape.

I don’t know why leaving our house for a few days causes me so much anxiety, but, well there it is.  I leave things for the last minute (a born procrastinator) and then run around the house in a manic state and then just sink into the passenger seat and relax until I realize we have forgotten something important and wait for the car to turn around and start the manic process all over until I can sink back into the passenger seat and relax.  That is pretty much it.  Happens every time even if I pack a few days in advance.  There could be some psycho-social revelation waiting for me to discover, but I would just rather say, “Yeah.  Accepting the fact that I get ready to leave my house in a state of sheer anxiety when traveling.  It is where I am and probably where I am going to stay.”  Getting ready for mania tomorrow morning.  No need for coffee in the early a.m..

I am looking forward to being in one of my favorite cities.  I look forward to being in a city that fits like a glove.  One in which I can find my way like going home to my childhood house.  In a sense that is what I am doing.  I grew up in Minneapolis and St. Paul.  I found my true love there.  I met lifetime friends.  I realized passions and values and created a community of like minded people.  I learned how manage relationships.  I grew up.  I am going home. 

I will spend time in Uptown; I will go out and have coffee with an old friend and lover.  I will take time to be with my husband in the late afternoon on Friday and we will go to galleries and eat yummy food and be together in places that take us back to a time when we met and discovered each other.  It already feels right.  It already feels like part of me is healing.  Minneapolis is my touchstone.  I am going home to become grounded and ready for challenges here in Madison.

I am also going to face Thanksgiving without my brother Linn for the first time in about 15 years.  I will look for him in the corner, drinking scotch with my bother-in-law and husband.  I will listen for his stories.  I will miss holding his hand and talking about my plans, about his plans, about what the future might hold.  I will simply miss him.  I am going to face life without him for the first time, really.  I have not had to face walking into his house and finding him gone.  I will face his absence at Thanksgiving and for me it will be my first true test in letting him go. 

I don’t want to let him go.  I want him back for me and for his family and for our mother and my siblings.  But I will keep that to myself.  Those spending Thanksgiving with us in MN have faced his physical absence on many occasions.  They have gone through the pain of expecting him and  receiving his absence many times.  It will still be painful.  It will still be uncomfortable.  It will still fill the room at times.  And in that, we will all be together.  We will also quietly know that he was a person to be thankful for knowing.  Flawed?  Oh, hell yes.  But he was also an amazing person who gave and gave without complaint.  A person who loved to be with others and enjoy some of the best things in life.  Someone who could amplify his enjoyment of life exponentially by sharing it with others.  That is what we will miss.  That is what I will long for when I am home.  That is something I will have to find in myself.

So we are off.  We are going to envelop ourselves in our family.  Revel in the sheer number of us.  Enjoy being with one another.  Laugh, eat, tell stories, listen, and play.  My family fills me up and makes me whole.  I am going to get filled up and made whole again.  I will bring that back to my true home and give it all back to my boys … all of them.