It’s cloudy outside and my Austrian conditioned body
immediately thinks it’s cold. I check
the weather. Nope. 72 F (22 C). It is
too warm for the middle of November. I
head out the door in my August clothes, open-toed sandals and all, to go to the
grocery store in my car. I take the
agonizingly long 5 minute drive to the store, grab my extra huge basket that
doesn’t require a coin deposit and head into the store that’s larger than all 3
of my neighborhood stores in Vienna combined.
It’s been a hard day, cloudy ones always are. I’m not sure if that’s because of a natural
human disposition toward depression on cloudy days or because cloudy days
remind me of Vienna.
As I take the first turn down an aisle in the store, I’m
bombarded by holiday decorations - Thanksgiving on one side, Christmas on the
other.
Ugh, my day just got
worse.
I do not even want to think about
the upcoming holidays.
They are looming
ominously in front of me, and I know I can’t avoid dealing with them much
longer, but I’m trying to put them out of my mind as long as possible.
It’s easier when it still feels like summer
outside.
It will be our first Thanksgiving and Christmas back “home,”
away from “home.”
If you’ve ever lived in a culture other than your home culture,
I know you get me. And everyone else is
saying “What? Aren’t you thankful to be with your family this year?” And the short answer to that question is
“Yes.” But there is a longer, more complicated answer which lies at
the heart of how I feel about the upcoming holiday celebrations.
We are grateful to spend time with our family this year. It has been five years since we spent
Thanksgiving and Christmas together. Unfortunately, that’s part of the extra
stressors that will add to our holiday celebrations. We are not the same people
that we were five years ago. We have
changed. The different life experiences that
we have had over the past few years have made us into the people we are today. Before we moved to Austria, we felt like our
families didn’t really understand all of our quirks and nuances sometimes. We are at a whole new level of strange now.
And our families have changed, too. When you live overseas, it’s often difficult
to keep up with all the “little” developments that are shaping your families
back home. How do you really know a
person you see a few days every two years?
So our families will be different, too.
We need to understand how to accept them as the people they are now
instead of how we expect them to be based on a five year old opinion. The entire celebration may end up being as
awkward as a junior high dance as we try to decide the best way to approach
each other without tripping over our own insecurities.
On my side, the family doesn’t even look the same. We’ve added a member, and we’re missing
another. This will be the first time my family has celebrated Thanksgiving and
Christmas together since my Dad died in 2013.
It’s going to be tough. Everyone
will have raw emotions and tender hearts.
The things that cause grief are often small and unexpected so you can’t
really prepare for what’s going to tug at your heart strings in that
moment. We will have to give each other
permission to cry and laugh and talk about Dad and leave the room if we need to
and get angry and still love each other.
This holiday season is part of healing, and dealing with the grief of
missing someone you love is not easy.
Then, there’s the grief my little Austrian – American family
will be experiencing on a totally different plane that our extended families
may not be able to understand no matter how hard they try. We are also mourning the loss of our International
family and our Austrian holiday traditions while trying to redefine what it
means to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas back in America.
The first year we were in Austria was the first time we had
ever celebrated these holidays without our families. We didn’t have any of our own traditions, and
we hadn’t built strong enough relationships with people in Vienna at that point
to share the holidays with them. But, over time, we figured out how to “do”
Thanksgiving and Christmas with our overseas family and make it a special time. Many of those traditions won’t transfer to
life in America so this year will be very similar to our first year in
Vienna.
We can watch football on Thanksgiving Day.
But it won’t compare to the almost palpable
excitement of watching the only American football game of the year we were
actually awake to see in real time blown up to life size proportions in the MPR.
Being surrounded by our family will be
wonderful.
But we will miss our huge,
chaotic group of spiritual brothers and sisters from around the world and a
slightly smaller, intimate group of our closest friends who walked with us
through those days last year when we didn’t even know if we wanted to breathe.
We will put up a Christmas tree.
But the
ornaments representing the different stages of our life are still in a box on
another continent. We can make Christmas cookies and even open Advent calendars
– thank you World Market.
But we won’t
be able to visit our favorite Christkindl Markt, drink our favorite Punsch, or
eat Krapfen the size of our heads. We will open gifts on Christmas morning, but
we won’t have Aunt Marci’s cinnamon rolls for breakfast.
And we can ring in the New Year.
But we won’t be watching the sky explode in
showers of color from the river near downtown.
Or dancing the salsa with our friends until the wee hours of the
morning.
We will grieve the loss of
these traditions and many others; it’s a normal part of dealing with change. And
the grief from not experiencing those traditions may manifest itself in ways
that are not expected and are not easily explained.
As I push my basket down the grocery store aisle, away from
any reminders of the coming season, I know that it’s the emotion and the pain that I really
want to avoid rather than the holidays. In my head, I know that
grieving is a healthy, normal part of the healing process. But in my heart, I also know that this
Thanksgiving and Christmas are going to be extremely difficult and
excruciatingly painful, not just for me, but for the people I care most
about. I am praying for strength and
wisdom for this holiday season. And also
for open eyes, so that when pain manifests itself in angry outbursts, hurtful
words, and disobedient behavior that I will see the pain rather than the
behavior and show compassion on the one that is hurting. Finally, I am praying that I will learn to be
grateful for what seems like a miserable situation. While many people in the world have no home,
I have two, and that makes me doubly fortunate.
