Holidays and Family – it’s complicated

Do I love my family? Absolutly Yes!  Do I love the holidays? Meh. It’s complicated.

I am happily married to the love of my life for 41 years.  We have produced 3 wonderful indivduals who are each awesome people that I love very much.  Some of those have produced grandchildren whom I and my husband adore.

Apparantly, my husband and I did everything wrong in raising children, and also we are old and know nothing.  We are actually kind of chill with this.  We have zero responsibities these days.

On the other hand, we are cool (probably not the current word) enough to be allowed to play board games with our children and their friends.  By games, I mean all of them, from super nerdy to modern complicated to traditonal to bluffing etc…. nothing is off limits for us, and Hubby and I continue to stay competitive enough with each generation in our family to still be invited.

But with me, sometimes there is still something missing.  A longing for an understanding/forgiveness/hug from my kids (which I still think of them even as they are obviously adults).

Complicating the holidays for me (and for those around me) is that my Dad passed away around Christmas time, and even after over 30 years, this time of year still brings its own pall.

So…. we just finished navigating all of our holiday duties.  Tomorrow, we are going to a friend game night of our best local friends (our age) to ruminate about how we all survived this holiday season.