On the Joy of Creating Holiday Family Memories of My Own

By James Prenatt — OTHER FATHER

This past Thanksgiving was the first without my grandmother. I feel a sense of guilt over that fact more than I feel sorrow, which made the event bittersweet. She had been the matriarch, the one who prepared dinner, made sure we set the table and correctly, and more importantly she was the center of our hearth, making sure we had a warm fire and a good meal to enjoy, regardless of whether or not we were biologically family. Seeing my grandfather — a bleak image of the man he once was, lonely and sad, more emotional than I thought him capable of — I began to think about the day when I would be in the same position.

No matter how much I miss my grandmother I know that she lived a long life, one filled with a large, loving family. And this was also the first Thanksgiving with the new baby. A child brings so much happiness into a household. We were all upset that our grandmother wasn’t there to share the joy, but took comfort in the fact that she had a little time to meet her great-grandchild. Life is a circle. I am young now but I will grow older, my children will have children (maybe) and then it’ll be my wife and I hosting dinner. I’ve started a fourth generation, and so on. The holidays remind me of this the most and that brings the strongest sense of nostalgia. As the leaves fall I recall…