As many of you know, I have disengaged myself from the stresses
of the typical gift-getting and giving frenzy of the Christmas
holiday.
As many of you know, I have disengaged myself from the stresses of the typical gift-getting and giving frenzy of the Christmas holiday.
But I love Thanksgiving because it’s all about the gathering, the breaking of bread together, and sharing love, not things.
Ten years ago this was my father’s last Christmas with us. In his last stage of his battle with cancer, we came home from Austin to celebrate Christmas, but wound up also helping my mother, sister and brother tend to him in what we believed were his final days.
Over the last two weeks of the year, extended family and his lifelong friends came to pay respects and say goodbye.
The outpouring of love must have caused a kind of rebound, because by the end of my visit, after weeks of being so weak that he had to have his head held to feed him frozen chips of Gatorade and root beer, my father made it out to his favorite chair to watch football while eating his beloved Italian sausage and drinking espresso!
It wasn’t a full recovery, though, I knew. And I just couldn’t say goodbye to him when it was time to leave, so I promised to return to visit again in two weeks time.
Thus began our “annus horribilus.” Without going into all the details, in the first eight months, we had six deaths in my family and a miscarriage.
We went back and forth so often on the “nerd bird” that the airport’s Starbuck’s staff knew our travel routine: two kids’ hot chocolates, a latte and a New York Times.
They’d see me coming, and start preparing the order, asking how everyone was holding up back home.
I had been in Austin three and a half years by that September. Finally finished pining after friends and family, I made some great new friends who became our Austin family and supported us that year by getting us to the airport on short notice, and filling my refrigerator with ready made dinners on our return to our house.
Just when I had finally accepted that my children would be raised as Texans (my son had even adopted a bit of a drawl, where the name Claire had two syllables – Clay-er, the word ‘hotel’ had three – ho-tay-el), my husband was offered a job back in Silicon Valley.
Although we had a nice lifestyle in Austin, affordable housing, high-achieving public schools, and a vibrant (and often free and child-friendly) arts and culture sector, we decided to move back home.
If you don’t count the muggy weather and fire aunts, Austin has an enviably high quality of life, compared to Santa Clara County. However, though the year was filled with loss, my family demonstrated over and over why it was so important to come back and live near them.
Through their words and examples, I and my children learned from my family a great deal about courage, tenacity and how to survive grief and loss; that sacrifice for family and individual happiness doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive; that we all support each other, giving what we can when we can; how to honor the old ones and cherish the younger ones, and the benefits of having roots in the community where generations of “our people” have lived before us.
The best schools in the country cannot teach my children the essential life lessons they receive from being in close relationship and proximity to my sister, the epitome of grace and forgiveness; my brother, who reminds us that there is always a way to live our lives in an authentic way; their spouses, who embrace and are embraced by our family; my niece and nephews, interesting kids we love to be around; my godparents, models of devotion to God and each other; my cousins, who share the same heritage and love of family; and last, but not least, my mother, because she is our model of love, reveling in her children and grandchildren, supporting her community with her passionate commitment and helping us remain connected to the ones who came before us through the passing down of stories and cherished things they once touched.
Since we’ve been home, we’ve also learned the best schools in the country can’t teach my children the kinds of grassroots energy and giving the South County community demonstrates all through the year. So we stay.
Every day, I am thankful to be back home. With them. With you. Happy Thanksgiving.
