The travel time between Kansas and Minnesota is about nine hours, with three bathroom stops, two fast food stops, and 75% of a Harry Potter audiobook. I know that because for the last 13 years, my family and I have made that drive so that we can spend Thanksgiving with my husband’s family. While the drive isn’t the most fun, the end result was always worth it. Family Thanksgiving was boisterous and fun with cousins chasing each other around and my husband and his brothers bickering about sports and politics. The food was always delicious and the company was even better.
I love my husband’s side of the family and we’re always grateful for the time together. Family time plus a Friday spent shopping in our favorite Kansas stores and hours spent in a hotel pool are what felt like Thanksgiving to me.
Last year, we did family Thanksgiving via Zoom. While it was probably my favorite Zoom meeting of the year (watching my 93-year-old mother-in-law try to join her first Zoom call was surprisingly entertaining. There was a lot of yelling), it still wasn’t the same as gathering together. After we signed off after two hours of Zooming, I was hopeful that Thanksgiving 2021 would be back to Kansas, back to loud, back to travel, back to shopping, eating out, back to hotel hot tubs, back to normal.
Turns out 2021 is still determined to not be normal.
While all of our extended family are fully vaccinated, my family is not. My youngest child hasn’t had her first shot yet, so she won’t be fully vaccinated by Thanksgiving. Given that our extended family includes people with high-risk medical conditions and a grandmother in her 90s, we want to err on the side of COVID caution and not risk our child exposing the people we love the most. So, while our most of our family will still gather in Kansas, we’ll be staying in Minnesota. Instead of a house full of people, we’ll be a family of four gathered around a small table.
It will be quiet, but maybe quiet is what we need.
Since the last time we gathered as a family for Thanksgiving, we’ve all been through a lot: a global pandemic, a year and a half of distance learning for two kids, job transitions for my husband and I, and the loss of a beloved family member. So much of the world has felt outside of our control and sometimes it has been hard to slow down and think about the things we are grateful for in the middle of global crisis. We are tired, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
I want to welcome the winter season with calm and introspection
Thanksgiving is often the start of a hectic holiday season and I just don’t have the emotional energy for it this year. One of my favorite things about the transition from fall to winter is that when the days get shorter and the temperatures drop, it feels right to slow down, to stay in, to get cozy with my little family. After all the transitions of the last two years, a start to the holiday season that doesn’t involve 18+ hours of driving and spending money on hotels and gas and food, sounds like the perfect way to create a space for a more relaxed holiday season.
I want this to be the holiday season of less.
Our little family will get to decide what feels most like Thanksgiving to us. We’ll have the pies and the turkey, of course, but maybe instead of hotel pools, we’ll have family game night. Maybe instead of Friday shopping, we’ll have popcorn and reading time in a blanket fort. Maybe instead of nights of crappy hotel room sleep, missed bedtimes, and the inevitable post-travel cold, we’ll have calm, rest, and be able to ease into the Christmas season feeling restored and relaxed.
Family is a gift, but quiet can be a gift, too.
I’ll probably be overjoyed to hit the road and head back to Kansas next year. I know my kids will be. But for this year, we’re going to travel less, shop less, and spend less so we can breathe more, reflect more, and just experience the soft joy of a quiet Thanksgiving.
