A Community of Compton Cousins

It's this time of year when I remember I never created a human family of my own to start traditions.

Since Mom's passing, my immediate family often ~ very often ~ celebrates holidays on other days of the year.  In the beginning, it was because Christmas was too sad to celebrate really big.  So we would meet up for a movie on Christmas Day and open up gifts on New Year's Day or some random day before Christmas.

Then the idea came that Rhonda should have the opportunity to create traditions with her own kids, so again the holidays got shifted around.

We do not celebrate Thanksgiving as an immediate family anymore.  That tradition ended five years ago.  I really miss getting together with my father, stepmother, sister, brother, nephews, and niece on Thanksgiving.  But I have learned to accept this change in my life.

Thank Goodness, I have Mom's cousins in town, or I guess I'd be like Randy with those Hungry Man T.V. Dinners when he had to work at the video store on Thanksgiving when we all piled up to Rio Linda to see Nanny.

I realize I never created my own traditions as a single person.  The isolation, the aloneness, seems more pronounced this time of year.  And although I am a loner by heart and the isolation does not make me sad, I am simply so much more aware of how my life turned out ~ after nearly 47 years ~ during the last two months of the year.

I look around these four walls in my tiny studio and hear Bubbie describing her granddaugher, Izzie, to the matchmaker in my favorite movie "Crossing Delancey":

"She lives alone in a room, like a dog."  

I smile at how true that image is for me.

Randy is back in Hollywood for several years now, so he only randomly gets back to Santa Cruz for holidays.  But he has a circle of friends even wider than our extended family.  So he has built his own community of friends that are like family, and he always seems content.

Rhonda developed a community of women friends who are like a second family from her connection to the Walnut Ave Women's Center twenty years ago.  She now has to juggle all of her other plans with keeping up new traditions with them.

I am so grateful for Mom's cousins who have always extended a warm welcome to me every Thanksgiving and every Christmas that they are in town.  It is like Mom can sense my aloneness down here on Planet Earth and is now busy orchestrating my social scene way up in The Big Sky.

God Bless My Cousins, The Comptons, for always remembering me this time of year.

My time spent "alone in a room, like a dog" is only for a brief moment as I have something to look forward to each holiday.

My Community is My Cousins who my mother loved so dearly. 

Cousin Gregg always teasing me and embellishing stories of all "my antics" back in the day.

Cousin Barbi ~ so much like another mother ~ filling up her cozy beach home with all the scents of Thanksgiving.

Cousin Melody always giggling at all of my jokes.

And Cousin Joy ~ a sweet voice on the end of the phone line in Idaho ~ as we each take turns saying hello after dinner.

We need each other more than ever now that Great Aunt Pearlie and Nanny passed away during the last couple of years.  I believe I help them as much as they help me in filling up a room with some holiday cheer.

I am truly grateful.

I am truly blessed.