After The Estrangement: Holiday Edition

Those first few times can be a bitch.

EDIT:All accompanying images are fragments of nasty grams sent to me, from my private collection, unless otherwise noted.

That first Christmas felt so transgressive.

I had had the “last straw” conversation with my father in September. I sent him my “I need a break from contact to protect my mental health” letter in November, before my forty-second birthday, which was also near Thanksgiving. A few years back, I had already started celebrating Thanksgiving with just my husband, kids and maybe a friend or two. That might have even been the year we invited my mom to come for turkey dinner and she cancelled last minute, although what year since 2007 didn’t that happen at least once?

By the time that December rolled around, I knew I couldn’t do my first post-estrangement Christmas without a plan. I decided that the best way to handle it was to get out of dodge.

Spending Christmas Eve with the Cazzata* family was a time-honored tradition. As a girl, I looked forward to it all year: driving by the Christmas lights, gathering with almost 60 other Cazzatas at whoever had the biggest houses, and eating seafood in the Southern Italian tradition: for us, Pasta con Sarde, Dungeness crab; marinated in olive oil, lemon juice and parsley, my father’s Pulpo (Octopus: tried it once, found it rubbery, but it was Pop’s thing and every year we had a dead octopus in the kitchen sink. Many years later, I saw my Octopus Teacher and tearfully swore to never eat those kind, rubbery geniuses again,) and my grandmother’s apple fritters, which were often unironically placed next to the smelt fritters, so you had to pay attention. One aunt made cherry crisp, even though it was the wrong time of year, and another aunt made “shrimp curry,” which was brine shrimp in a weird, yellow paste that favored neither shrimp nor curry. But mostly the men ran the show with the holiday food: Uncle Guido with the pizza, Uncle Pasta with the Pasta (I do not like Pasta Con Sarde. The combination of sardine bits, gritty bread crumbs and salty cheese with the red sauce has always grossed me out, as does bacon floating in the clam chowder. But honestly if you’re into that kind of thing, and you didn’t make 7 pounds of it at a time, you might like it. Or maybe I just don’t like Uncle Pasta’s cooking. ) Often the men would cook at home and then dump their dish along with random bags of groceries in the kitchen and then exit to go smoke tobacco and drink wine while the women arranged their abandoned bags and bowls and turreens along with everything else. Uncle Lucca walked around sniffing at everything and making sure nobody broke or stole anything from his house while and we kids ran wild, eating, playing tag, and watching Donnie and Marie, Laverne and Shirley, Three’s Company, and Happy Days before and after dinner. Then the cousins exchanged gifts, and usually the kids got gifts from their godparents. Uncle Lucca and Aunt Mae were my godparents, but Uncle Lucca usually never talked to me so much as sniff at me. Aunt Mae gave the most thoughtful gifts and was so gentle and kind, which was her biggest gift of all. When we were very small, we did Christmas plays for the entire group. The whole thing was full of magic , and I didn’t even mind my girl cousins doing “one, two, three NOT IT” in order to not sit next to me, or my brother Jack coming to yell at me. IT WAS CHRISTMAS. Nonna was there, loving me. It was safe.

Until it wasn’t, and the first time I felt that way was the year my parents divorced, 1993, and I walked into the Cazzata bash 20 minutes late, halfway into Nonna saying grace, and about 75 people glared at me. Rather than being accommodating, my parents decided to celebrate their first divorced Christmas separately, on the same day, Christmas Eve, and to both invite me and make me choose. So I tried to spend a little time over appetizers with Mom and some cousins from the Mellfoy side, and then try to make it across town in time to the Cazzata dinner, where aunt Dolce s made a special point to tell me she could never forgive my mother for leaving her poor big brother.

I have a terrible sense of direction, and in those days before iPhones and even clunky car GPS’ and I got lost on the way from my mom’s new condo way out in the East Hills to Uncle Pasta’s house in Campbell, and I kept driving in circles, cursing and screaming and crying while clutching my printed-out Mapquest directions while trying to sneak a glance at the real maps with one eye on the road.

In the present day/2023 timeline, we had a nice, low-key Thanksgiving (I’m not even a fan of calling it that anymore, as it’s a day that represents genocide of Indigenous Americans and wasn’t declared a national holiday until the 1860s) with friends we have come to see as part of our chosen family. The day was full of feasting, good conversation, dogs, and comfort, as only you can achieve when you feel safe.

The first Thanksgiving after I sent the letter to my father, we had those same friends over. I wasn’t entirely used to scaling down a meal to a party of six from a group of 20, and made way too much food. The tablecloth my mom had handed down to me wasn’t the right shape for my table. During bathroom breaks, I stole looks at social media on my phone. A photo of my father, with an expression that aimed for brave, but feeble, with the relevant, key siblings, uncles, aunts and cousins squeezed in next to him, cheek to cheek, arms over shoulders. In the ancient, crappy lighting of my dad’s apartment, their similar smiles took on a sinister shine, and their matching brown eyes seemed to bore into me from the screen, as they silently chanted, It’s too bad you couldn’t make it; your father really misses you, the turkey was so good, and uncle Pasta made his Pasta, over and over.

But I got through it! And based on how it made me feel, decided I didn’t want to wait around for my mom to cancel on Christmas and I didn’t want to be at home when I knew the Cazzatas were rallying around my father 8 miles away. It was the one year that my stepson was at his mom’s on the 25th. So I did what any decent coward with resources would do and planned a road trip to San Diego with my husband and our two-year-old.

It ended up being one of my favorite Christmas memories of all time. Mom was relieved to be off the hook and thought it sounded fun. She was always up for fun, my mom, until she wasn’t.

We drove down from the Bay Area to San Diego in one day, and drove out to an Air B and B which ended up being a decent no-frills apartment close to the beach in La Jolla. We had a late nosh at a wine bar where we met some people who invited us to a Christmas morning beach party. We went to the San Diego Zoo on the first full day, at the end which, as we were walking to and from the sunset on the beach, we bought a little Christmas tree. My husband and I dragged it into the apartment. On Christmas Eve, we went to downtown La Jolla and bought all of our Christmas presents last-minute and had lunch at a little fish market. Then we had dinner at “home”-crab with oil, lemon, garlic and parsley; with a Caesar salad, and crusty bread. We put the baby to bed, hung all our presents on the tree, and my husband and I had a Sopranos marathon watch party, as a way for me to gain some closure on the Cazzata side of the family.

On Christmas morning, we went to the beach and drank champagne with the people we had met the first night, plus what looked like their entire neighborhood. A lanky young guy in a Santa Suit ran down to the beach with a surfboard and started paddling. We made sand castles. I forgot to look at my phone most of that weekend. I still cried a lot.

And so will you, my sweet estrangers, that first time, and probably many after that. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have done it. It’s an impossible knot of emotions, but if you need a break, you need a break. You shouldn’t have to feel, like I did so anxious and afraid of what other people think that you have to leave town. But, if you are like I was that first year, I didn’t have the emotional regulation skills or the calmness of mind to have the tough conversations that would have been required to discuss my choices with my family, or to meeting the middle. So I met myself where I was and ended up somewhere else entirely, having an adventure I never could have had were I not estranged.

You can too. Make it new. Something I was reminded of in my interview with the gorgeous and fabulous April Lampert and Amy Baldwin of Shameless Sex—for Good Times Santa Cruz. (Buy their book now and thank me later.) When I asked them about sexy date nights, April said “there is a huge power in making something new” as well as being true to where you are-in stage of life, in state of mind, and current physical ability. As far as date nights go, that could be turning your home into a cute french bistro with a boudoir ten feet away.

As far as holidays after the estrangement-turns out that I had also hit upon the power of the new. And I met myself where I was, which was apparently, San Diego.

Doing something completely new brought me out of my normal day-to-day reality, and out of my sadness and into the joy of the present. The year after that was just a little easier, and this time Wobbler (my stepson, not his real name but an inside joke between him and me) joined us. Thus began the tradition of him staying with his mom until after Yule, which they celebrated as their gift-giving and feasting holiday, and then coming to our house. That was the year The Force Awakens came out, which we saw in the theater on Christmas Eve. The kids were weird and finicky about going to the movies on Christmas that first year. But by the next year when The Last Jedi (Am I the only person who likes this movie? I am in love with old, cranky Luke) came out they were all in and jazzed about “our tradition!” of going to the movies on Christmas Eve. Then that tradition had to change in 2020, when the pandemic kept us out of the movie theater. It’s changing again now that Wobbler’s a freshman at Far Enough Away But Still In The State College.

My point is: it does get easier, but I still sometimes hate-scroll socials, or cry because I miss my mom, who would have cancelled anyway. And I say this, not to overwhelm, but to encourage you, because you are going to find your thing, and if your thing is hanging out in your apartment eating Panda Express and sugar cookies in your reindeer boxers while you hate-watch Love Actually and drink Sambuvca with your cats (that does sound fun, except I’m allergic to cats and think Sambuvca is kind of weird-tasting, and expensive, even if the coffee bean thing is way cool and I kind of want to drink it because it makes me feel close to my Pop, even though he is long-gone and I chose to estrange from him.)

Anyone who is estranged knows, it’s complicated. We braid the old with the new, or find new yarns. I am rooting for and invested in your joy.

One new tradition that I love is making donations to charity and letting the kids choose one that we donate to on their behalf. That is definitely something I didn’t learn from any of my relatives.

And, even though I forgot this point until the end, it goes without saying that you do not need to be estranged to choose to have a holiday your way, with or without seeing whomever you want. And those of you who are “going in!” and braving the holiday with a half-toxic or safe-adjacent family, I hope you know you get to set limits of how long you will stay, who you will and will not give rides to, what you can bring, what you can eat, and all the things that adults get to do, no matter who gives you the stink eye or the guilt sigh.

So do whatever gets you through a tough time in a world that is suffering multiple heartbreaks. Give. Volunteer. Do the thing you always wanted to do but thought they’d judge you for. Do nothing, and avoid it altogether. Find people to check in with, because that’s a good idea. Watch the entire season of Love is Blind followed by all the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films in reverse order. Just, take it slow, don’t overdo it, get plenty of rest, and….be you.

*Pseudonyms are the norm for After the Estrangement.