Lost in Thanksgiving

I yearn for my family this time of year.  

I remember the years of waking up and on Thanksgiving, the house smelling of Turkey, my mother watching the Macy's day parade, waiting for Santa Clause to appear so she could wave to the TV.

When I was 13 my parents split and suddenly my holidays changed and Thanksgiving was no longer hosted at our house and I ate Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant on Madison Ave. They never quite gave me as much stuffing as I wanted and it wasn't nearly as good as my moms.  Before I left the house for my Thanksgiving dinner I'd ask her to bring me home leftovers as there was nothing like "real" canned cranberry sauce.  I suspect now, it had to hurt my mom, that her daughter, was off to experience Thanksgiving a "different kind of way" without her. 

I didn't necessarily want to spend Thanksgiving with my moms family, I just wanted my parents to spend it together.    I wanted them to sit and talk and be adults without all the emotions, for the sake of their daughter.  They however, could never put emotions aside. I was torn between two lives always feeling I was living a dual life. The life of my mother and the life of my father. I was always the one in the middle, sorting things out for the both of them.  Talking for the both of them..., listening for the both of them... and loving for the both of them.  Two people, so defensive, just not knowing how to communicate with each other. If only things could have been different.  

Instead my mother would pass, not ever expressing how she really felt to my father  or ever knowing how my father felt about her. And I would be left  in constant search as to what a family really is.