By Suzanne Braun Levine,
Mothering In The Middle
Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite day of the year. The way I do it, it has all the advantages of a holiday with none of the oppressive side-effects. There are no presents, so there is no guilt or financial stress. The food is wonderful and comforting (with lots of leftovers). I can enjoy a jello mold or sweet potatoes with marshmallows without shame. The participants are so ill-assorted that there is no way it could be called a dinner party, so there is little worry about maintaining my cool. Moreover, there is no chance that anyone can mix up the date and ring the doorbell a day early. And somehow family is absorbed into the chaos and the calories in a way that tension is neutralized. The pleasure I feel as I gaze around the table is a far cry from the anxiety family life usually brings. Or used to.
Back when my children were small and I was working long hours, a couple of my colleagues and I founded the Thank God It’s Monday Club. Why, you may wonder did we prefer Monday to the more traditional Friday? Because after a weekend of clumsy parenting, unaccomplished tasks, stressful engagement with my husband and a pervasive sense of exhaustion, guilt and incompetence, it was a relief — a life saver, really — to get back to the office. There it was likely that at least once during the day I would feel that I was good at something, that I could complete something, that I could accomplish something worth doing, and that the people around me valued my presence. Our club was mostly made up of women with nuclear families, but we were often joined by those who had extended families and had spent time with them over the weekend… read more.