The Story of Our First Thanksgiving in February ~ How a Broken Family Gathered for a Magical, Peaceful Dinner

Because she loved him, all this was possible.

•••

I worked the Atari joystick, timing the leaps of a pixelated, bright green frog in-between the cars for safe passage across a digital busy four-lane highway. On this summer evening, my dad and baby sister sat with me in the living room of their house, fixated on the TV screen, watching the frog.

Our dad sipped his coffee behind us, settled in his mahogany rocker with the handrests of carved lion heads. My little sister watched with her huge, dark brown eyes, beside me, both of us right up close to the screen.

If I focused and played well, the smiling frog could snatch a few bonus flies on his way to safety, raising my score. As the Frogger video game progressed, the cars and trucks sped up. So would the logs on a river, the next obstacle. Some of the logs would turn into crocodiles with open mouths and sharp teeth.

Together, we were transfixed, watching that bright green frog.

Promise of a New Family

My stepmother, in another room that evening, was pregnant when she and my dad bought the house, a modest, post-war brick bungalow east of Cleveland, close to Lake Erie.

It was a time full of promise of a new family — one with a sibling I longed for and one that included me, his first daughter from his first marriage.

Our dad was a salesman then, who traveled during the week. He was handsome, tall, broad-shouldered, strong, and smart. Charming and funny, with a mischievous, boyish grin. He could sell anything. He could fix anything.

And that night, he was still quite young, in his mid-thirties.

In his frog-watching trance, Dad said, sort of to himself:

“Think I’ll take this game with me this week. Barbara’s kids would love this!”

Splat.

I didn’t know anything about Barbara or her kids. My stepmother’s name is not Barbara.

I knew his cheating, among other differences, had helped break up my parents’ marriage.

So,  I knew what his muttered few words meant. And I hoped I was wrong.

I felt numb. Suspicious. Disoriented. I was silent and still.

That little voice, the deep-down voice knew and it whispered: He’s seeing another woman, and her kids, on the side. And taking our stuff to play with them. My Frogger game!

Later, when my stepmother told me through tears that she and my dad were separating, that he’d found someone else, I slowly nodded in recognition.

He told you? She asked, astounded. Well, no, I said. Not exactly.

•••

Dad was often a lot of fun — until you counted on him to be a grown up. I believe he truly wanted to be a family man, like his father — but he just could not figure it out; he could not control his weaknesses.

His number one weakness? Women.

He’d started two families — one with my mom, a second with my stepmother. At one time or another, he had cheated on all of us.

Much later, the pain of his rejection of our second family sank and settled into all those tiny little pockets of me, all those tiny spaces we carry around with us. His cheating was rejection of all of us. When you are a little kid, you think you have failed.

•••

My parents had wrestled on the olive green braided rug on the living room floor of their first house. He had her pinned. My three-year-old self warned him to let her up before I deployed a tiny red sneaker cocked over my shoulder by its white shoelace. The game stopped.

Later, when I told my mom this was my first memory, she said he’d been tickling her.

When my own parents’ marriage unraveled, I was too young to remember the details. Nor did I remember my parents happy together, although I like to believe that was true, at least for a short while.

My mom raised me and is my superhero. A single mom who worked hard to ensure I had everything I needed and most of what I wanted.

Except for the one essential she couldn’t give me: My dad’s full attention. Time with my dad. Peace with my dad.

That would take decades, a lot of work and another woman.

•••

My mom could comfort me, yet couldn’t fix my longing for my dad. I missed him — even when he was right there in the room with us.

Yet, I adored my dad. Even when he fell short, even when he disappointed me, even when I was furious with him.

There were glimpses of potential.

My baby pictures show a dad who is sweet and tender, cradling me in the crook of his arm.

But — he would also disappear for weeks at a time, and pop up out of the blue. This instability scared my mom, who was at home caring for a baby.

There were the other women, too. So my parents divorced when I was three.

A year later, my dad married my stepmother.

I visited with my dad and stepmom on weekends and holidays. He was on the edge of my life. Always on the edges.

For awhile, my dad and stepmother and I were a lovely little family of three.

That dad woke up early on winter Saturdays to load up the car and drive us through the dark morning out of Cleveland to the mountains in New York for a day of skiing. I learned the snow-plow stop and how to hang on to the tow rope or J-bar for a ride up the mountain.

The exhilaration of speed over glistening, sparkling snow. Wintergreen sensations of crisp and cool air thrilled and refreshed me. On warm days, we sat outside the lodge on picnic tables, eating sandwiches and the soup my stepmother had ladled into a Thermos and packed in a red plaid bag.

Once, when I was about 9, as the chair-lift scooped us up and began its climb high above the snow, I slipped and started to fall off the rising metal chair. My dad caught me with one strong arm and hung on as I flailed in the frigid air, until the whole chair lift system froze and people had gathered below us. He refused to let go. I’ve got her, the woman on the ground said, reaching up for me. I promise, she said. He released me into her arms and I was back on solid ground.

He took care of me then, and I soaked it up.

How good it felt to bask in his attention. How amazing to feel his care and protection. Those moments were too few and far between. Once, for my birthday, I asked for time with my dad.

I was 10 when my sister was born, my beautiful baby sister with big eyes like black coffee.

Christmases were shiny tinsel, bubble lights and paper chains we made together of colored construction paper. New skis under the tree.

•••

In the blur of memory, there is also chaos and arguments about child support money and court dates. My dad was always behind. My mom was always angry. In their frustration, my parents said a lot of ugly things about each other. Phone calls ended with a slam of the rotary phone against its cradle.

In the heat of any argument, my dad would set his jaw, yell, swear, slam the door behind him, slam the car door shut and peel out of the driveway, tires squealing on the pavement.

He was volatile, not violent. I was afraid he would blow up and storm off, never that he would strike me. I was about 15 when my dad and stepmom divorced.

I rarely saw him, for many years. Where did he live? I don’t know. My memory is fuzzy.

When his father — my Pop-Pop — died, I was a senior in high school and we gathered at my grandparents’ house. That day, my dad wept in my arms in the shade of a peach tree my grandfather had planted. A rare moment from that time.

That day, his new girlfriend Stephanie came with him and sat quietly in the living room, focused on her needle and thread. She mended the garments in her hands as my grandmother quietly cried.

•••

When I look back, with a mature and more gracious heart, my dad in his way was trying to re-connect. But he was quite lost and didn’t know what to say or how to even talk to me.

I didn’t want to help him figure it out.

I was too angry. Why even speak to him? Why get to know Stephanie? Why bother?

We did the obligatory Christmas visits at my mom’s house. Mom, Dad, me, the cats and the heap of anger at the clueless man.

•••

Yet, he would not go away. I left home for college in Boston.

He kept calling.

We didn’t have much to talk about. One Christmas visit, I told him he was not invited to my college graduation.

He kept calling.

•••

One summer morning, when I was 20 and living in Boston, I woke from a dream about my dad and started to write. Two hours later, memories of him fixing my bikes and cars filled 20-some, tear-stained, hand-written pages.

My heart started to soften. That morning offered a small light through the keyhole of this heavy, thick door. This vault.

If our soul’s mission is to heal from our core wounds and life’s losses by finding a way to turn grief into grace, then that sleeping and waking dream of watching my dad fix my bike was a first step.

I settled in Maine after college. I needed to be far from my family-of-origin, to figure things out on my own. I needed those big, beautiful forests and mountains and the ocean — those places where nature is so big and wild, and people are so small.

I needed the people I met in Maine. A few very astute friends who quickly spotted my unresolved loss. My dad couldn’t be grieved as if he was dead. Nor was he an active part of my life. Just out there. A painful figure on the edge of my life.

•••

At 25, my therapist urged: Decide.

Keep him in your life and figure it out, or shut him out and be done.

I could not shut him out. We are part of each other. I wanted to understand the parts of me that came from him. I chose to rebuild.

So I focused on the things my Dad had done and could do for me. The things from the dream: Fix my bike, then my car. Later, we’d work together on my old, fixer-upper houses.

I thawed. We began to heal. It took a long time. One tiny step at a time.

When my grandmother, his mother, died, we cried together and then we talked. Really talked, for the first time. We started to have real, honest, heart-to-heart conversations.

Maybe the father he became was not a conscious choice, but the best he could do.

Much later, I learned how he struggled with manic depression, what we now call bipolar disorder. But in the ‘70s, we called it wild, unreliable, erratic, volatile.

My Dad eventually learned that if he stopped taking his medicine, he felt miserable — and it was misery to be around him.

•••

A few years after that crossroads, Dad started to visit me in Maine.

Once, he came for Christmas. On Christmas Eve, we walked along the lake near my apartment in the bitter cold, and saw an ice skater drilling into the ice, testing its thickness and safety. We wished him a Merry Christmas. He waved back, wishing us the same.

I splurged on a nice cut of beef, rolled it in peppercorns and roasted it. We cooked lobsters for Christmas dinner.

We’d settled into a fragile place of peace I’d so longed for.

My dad and I could finally talk about anything. We were honest, direct and open. At times, we cursed at each other. To anyone listening, our conversations must have sounded unusual for a father and daughter. But they worked for us. They were indeed love in action, f-bombs and all.

Once, we talked about a father who was checking out of his son’s life.

My dad shook his head.

“He’ll regret it,” he said. “I missed so much. I’d do it all differently if I could. I’m so sorry.” Your mom did a great job, he said.

It was a stunning, powerful acknowledgement and apology.

“I know dad,” I said. “You’re here now.”

•••

When I believed it was time for me to build a home and make a family, I asked my dad if to join my mom and walk me down a sandy beach to be married on the rocks beside the Atlantic.

Later, when that marriage failed, I wept in my father’s arms.

Finally, our relationship seemed pretty good. Even healthy.

In November, 2009, my dad’s appendix ruptured. Infections soon raged in his lungs and abdomen. For two agonizing weeks, a ventilator breathed for him as he slept deeply in a medical coma.

In the pale grey afternoons, I held his left hand in mine, spoke quietly to him about the pink-orange, fresh energy of each sunrise and offered my strength for him to use, to stay with us.

With all my might, I pulled him, in a tug of war with death. His hand warmed in mine. I felt our connection.

I prayed and hoped and pled with him, to exhaustion. Late each night, I drove back to my mom and stepfather’s house. I crawled into their bed and updated my mom, as my kind stepfather disappeared into the next room, finding some task to busy himself with until I yielded his side of their bed.

At some point, I stepped back and realized our sprawling, complicated family was — could it be?! — functioning.

My sister, dad’s long-time girlfriend, Stephanie, and I visited in shifts, sitting vigil at the hospital. Our moms took care of us. I asked our moms, my dad’s ex-wives, to stay away from his room, in hopes of protecting him from any stress of any kind.

•••

For the first time, I got to know Stephanie. And I liked her.

By then, I lived in Pennsylvania, and dad had lived with Stephanie for more than 20 years. They never married.

After all that time, I still hardly knew her.

She rescued injured dogs and cats missing a limb or a tail — animals nobody else wanted. She hunted for bargains at thrift stores. She had a soft spot for broken things with potential. She was constantly mending.

For years, this struck me as so odd — until I realized how broken my Dad was. Stephanie wasn’t interested in having kids, being a stepmom or making a family with him. She didn’t need him to be a good dad or responsible provider.

She simply loved him. Absolutely as he was. Unconditionally.

So much so that twice, he’d moved out of their home and in with another woman. Twice she had taken him back.

I’d judged her as weak, then. Yet, she was capable of incredible, deep and accepting love of a flawed man and that must have taken tremendous strength.

Perhaps her unconditional love was just what he needed.

•••

He battled that infection and got better. Three days before Thanksgiving, he was awake, talking  and breathing on his own. He spent his favorite holiday in the hospital, so we all promised we’d have Thanksgiving together when he was better.

Not that we usually all spent Thanksgiving together. But that didn’t seem to matter. No one mentioned that.

•••

Nonetheless — one cold February evening, I watched, awestruck, as my mother, my stepmother and Stephanie all worked together in Stephanie’s small kitchen.

My mom giggled and stirred the mushroom gravy as if she’d done it every year and my stepmother joked. I think she brought sweet potatoes — but no one remembers for sure.

They worked together to prepare dinner for our whole tangled, grafted family.

I’d worried about a blowup. Surely there would be some argument, some joke that went too far and sent someone fleeing with squealing tires into the cold night.

But I was wrong.

It was a wonderful, magical night. Stephanie’s china and crystal sparkled on her antique dining table.

Genuine gratitude flowed that night. My Dad thanked his family and friends for all they had done when he was sick.

My kind stepfather was there, too. He loves a good turkey dinner.

At long last, we were a jovial — even functional — family, and after all that past acrimony, and bitterness and drama. I relished it.

•••

On the surface, dad appeared healthy. But I have to wonder if he ever regained his full strength.

For two more years, our complicated, mended family gathered to celebrate Thanksgiving in February. One year, I barely made it in time for dessert, struggling with the grief of my own divorce. The next year, I traveled home for dinner with the love of my life, to meet my parents, and step-parents and Stephanie. On the way — four hours on Interstate 80 — I was so nervous that I took the wrong ramp after a pit-stop. We backtracked East one exit, and had to turn around.

But we were still on time.

By the November Thanksgiving of 2012, dad was weak and ashen from pancreatic cancer. Soon, just after the New Year, I whispered to him about our good memories and urged him to let go of all the pain in this life, into the peace.

Instead of a funeral, he wanted a summertime party in Stephanie’s garden. As the date approached, my stepmother prepared the invitations, and my mother helped Stephanie weed her garden.

•••

My husband and I have hosted seven annual Thanksgiving in February dinners in central Pennsylvania. One every year since we’ve been together except 2013, the year my dad died, and in 2021 during the COVID pandemic.

We typically serve about 25 people, including Stephanie, who drives out from Cleveland with her crowd-pleasing jalapeno bacon poppers.

For me, this dinner is a celebration of so many things.

Dad and I healed, and our family ultimately figured out how to gather and function—at least once a year for our own, made-up holiday.

A gathering of gratitude that has brought me a deep peace.

Before he died, Dad knew I’d found the love of my life. Once, he met my two amazing stepsons.

How I wish he could see our beautiful family. During dinner, I turn to Stephanie and say: “He would just love this, wouldn’t he?”

And she says: “Oh yes. Yes. He would.”

•••

Once, peace in my family-of-origin seemed impossible. In the 11 years since we found some peace together for awhile, I’ve reflected a lot and told the story over and over again.

This is what I’ve learned.

Gratitude loosens a knotted heart like WD-40 on a jammed lock. My heart opened and lifted toward grace, and compassion for a man I could not help but love. I’d voiced my anger. I punished him. Then I forgave him and made amends, healing as our relationship healed.

He never let go of me. He never stopped trying to make things right. He apologized.

My dad was terribly broken, and had broken all of our hearts. And yet we all loved him, in different ways.

Finally, he found a woman who loved him unconditionally — a kind of love we should not expect from our partners.

And yet, she could give him that relentless, bottomless love. He needed it. He basked in it, and that love lifted him to become better.

Not perfect.

Better. A better man. A better father. Enough for us to heal — and possible only because she loved him.