For most of my life holidays never meant much to me.  When I was a kid Christmas meant, you got gifts, Easter meant you looked for eggs with prizes in them. Thanksgiving meant that you ate a lot of food and your family came over, or you went to their place.   Somewhere along the timeline of childhood to adolescence the holidays became less and less meaningful.   My family met less and to me it became more and more about a day, where everything was closed.

Thanksgiving for most of my young adult life didn’t really make much sense.  We were supposed to be thankful for the first settlers being helped by the Native Americans.  The Native Americans were later slaughtered by the next few waves of early settlers coming.  No one cared about that.   They cared about eating to excess, taking a few days off and watching football.

However life has a way of always showing itself to you, no matter how much you think you have it figured out.  In 2008 things were a little bit different.  I was a dad and I hadn’t seen my kids in a few weeks.  To any guy that as been through a divorce of a custody battle, you know how agonizing that can be.  Somehow when couples split up that have kids the parents never mean to play the kids off the parents, but it happens.  For the last 10 years of my life I was used to being alone on the Holidays.  It was just another day to me.  It was great, everything was closed.  The roads were open.  I could go find some diner where other lonely people hung out.  I could strike up some conversation with another social nomad and another side of life was revealed to me.

On Thanksgiving in 2008 that didn’t work for me.  At that time when the communication with my son’s mom wasn’t good.  It went back and forth and all the punches weren’t pulled.  I am sure on both ends.  On that day in particular I wanted to see my sons and pick them up and take them to a restaurant spend some time with them, have them run around, throw them up and down and do all the things that dads and sons do.  They were in Dallas/Fort Worth and I was in Austin.  I forget the exact circumstances at the time but something that was characteristic of their mother at the time was to send me a massage saying something like –

“Your kids don’t want to see you, why don’t you kill yourself and get out of our lives”

Sounds pretty harsh, right…well I’m sure I relayed a message equally as brutal before and after that one.   The thing was, this Thanksgiving I wasn’t going to see my kids.  I didn’t know when I was going to see my kids and that’s all I wanted to do.
During those times it was common to get a call from my kids on a day like Thanksgiving, talk to them.  Have them say they couldn’t wait to see me.  We’d get all excited about what we were going to do then when I’d show up they wouldn’t be there.  Their mom had taken them somewhere else and told them I couldn’t make it.   What’s even more screwed up is when you call the police because you have a court order, they usually take about 2 hours and when they show up they say they will write it down and if you go to court you can show that a cop wrote down that you were somewhere and your kids weren’t.  You really have no power.

This Thanksgiving I was told once again, I wasn’t welcome to see them.   That was the first day in my life that I had ever felt that alone.  People had always talked about how ‘hard’ the holidays are, or how lonely they can be and this was the day I got that.   That day I called my usually friends who didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving and everyone was busy.  I went and attended some support groups I belonged to and for an hour or so that was alright but it didn’t replace the isolation and sadness I felt when I got back in my car to go home to an empty room.   I remember that day it was cold and nothing felt comfortable.  At that time I had made email accounts for my boys that they could access when they were older and things had cooled down with their mother and I.  I sent them both messages about how I missed them and how I wished them a Happy Thanksgiving and for whatever reason they thought I wasn’t’ around I was proud of them and they made me one of the happiest men in the world.   An email isn’t a hug, or time spent with them, but when that’s all you can do that’s what you’re left with.

That night I ended up at a diner, eating my Thanksgiving dinner with the one waitress working that night.  I couldn’t wait for Thanksgiving to be over.  I couldn’t wait for the world to wake up again and have the distractions of life live again.

A few hours later I went to bed, woke up the next day and the loneliness went away again in the background.

That year was tough.  All the holidays sucked.  The same back and forth between mom’s and dad’s that can’t get along.

The ending to this story (at least for now) doesn’t end up like you might think.  Those 2 boys I haven’t seen in over 3 years.  Before that, I was able to spend some good time with them.  I will never forget it.  Long story short, things between their mom and I got worse and worse.  More drama, more chaos, more blame.  In that time a lot of things in my life got better, I spent that time fixing a lot of the problems that ended me up in such volatile relationship with someone.  In fact that change started in 2008 when this story began.

So why am I writing this story?  

I am writing this little story because today is Thanksgiving 2015.  Today I have a lot to be thankful for.  My life is great.  It is true that everyday of my life I don’t see my 2 boys I am saddened and miss them.  I am sure they are sad too.  The reason why I don’t see them is because in 2012 their mom pressed child abuse charges on me.  Her family had done this 2 years prior but they were dropped and I should have seen the warning signs back then.  I don’t want to get into blame because that doesn’t help anyone especially my kids who are affected the most.

I am writing this story because I have a lot to blame and complain about.  In my life I have lost a ton of things.  I could get into the detail of all of those and make it about how I was wronged, or how I have done wrong or whatever.  I have 1000s of reasons of why life sucks and is unfair.   I can tell you this, the saddest day in my life was not Thanksgiving 2008, it was in 2012 when I was told I would not see my kids for 2 years.   To me that was the day I lost everything.   When you lose everything you don’t make things political.  You don’t play the blame game and make who you are and what you feel about justifications and all this other bullshit.   You submit.  You give up, because that’s all you can do.   And when you do that life starts to show itself in what it is really about.  You learn to be grateful for the things you have, and not what you don’t have. You learn that the only thing you can truly change is yourself and it is only then that the world around you gets better.  You learn that the greatest things in the world that make you human, love, peace, unity and freedom come from within and are shared personally and not 1000 miles away voiced by some cause.

Right now, I can guarantee you that there’s a lot of terrible things happening in the world.  There are no shortages or tragedies and trauma to get worked up about.  All of which are taking you out of the moment of pure beauty you can be having with what’s around you right now.  There is a lot that might make you think that that world sucks and is about to start World War III along with the latest hashtag on whatever ‘cause’ that is being pumped out now.   But right now, I have a lot in my life.  I’m about to sit with my family and do all those things that I once never thought were important, and enjoy them.  This is all because I stopped making things about what they’re supposed to be and started making them about being grateful for the things around me.

If you can learn to do that you’ve learned a life skill.   No matter what world you’re living in as long as you’re alive you have enough for that moment.   All the times I have been in pain, confused and nothing worked if I stopped fighting and started accepting that pain and confusion turned into peace and happiness.

When I think back about the problems in my life in 2008 and the problems now I am immediately grateful.  But that real gratitude isn’t in the comparison.  It is in the simple moment of recognizing the things I have right now   I have a beautiful family that I get to see, a woman that I wake up with everyday and live me life with.  A son who’s life I have been around since his birth, and another son on the way (I only make boys).  I have 2 great sons waiting in the distance who want to see their dad, and believe me I want to see them too.  But for all sorts of reasons we can’t see each other now.  I could always blame and complain, but that might get in the way of life sorting everything out.

Steve

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