No Place Like Home for the Holidays

It was one thing to move here by myself, and quite another to make it into something that feels like home for my 3rd grader. He's been slow to come around to possibly considering himself a New Yorker, and I've cautiously tried to give him time and new ways to engage with this turf --hence things like 14 hours on a bus for 8 hours in NYC. That may prove to have been one of the smartest things I've done lately, but that's a different story.

We're managing, though one of the things he doesn't articulate well is that he's afraid of being disloyal if he refers to New York as home. Really, though, what 8 year old does?

Our next big challenge is Christmas. Here or there? There or here? There are some serious logistics involved here, as any 8 year old boy can tell you. The house in Michigan is bigger, so there is more room for presents under the tree. The Michigan house also has a fireplace--very important for believers. On paper, it appears that the optimal location for the most loot is our house in Michigan.

On the other hand, Yuletide in New York means that there won't be the challenge of choosing what to take back and what to leave in Michigan due to car space. Further, since he is lobbying the Claus very hard for Clone Trooper reinforcements, the original troops are already in New York, and they do NOT travel well. Their armor makes them grumpy after a while. Not to mention, of course, his best friend down the street is in New York. I hear they've made plans for holiday nonsense.

Logistics aside, there are the emotional issues--he's only ever known Christmas in Michigan, and the routines and rituals we have there are familiar if a little weird. There will, of course, be new routines and rituals in New York. We just don't know yet what they are.

Unlike him, I know that those rituals will emerge, and we will adapt and embrace them whatever they turn out to be. Different friends will become a part of our extended family, and we'll add new decorations and dimensions to our celebrations. But I know these things because I'm older, and because I've moved many times both as a child and as an adult--and because I'm an adult, and because I have already learned these, I forget that I need to be patient as he filters through them and finds his own meanings.

I'm looking forward to our tree this year, wherever we put it, because it is an inviolable part of our ritual. It will mark our space as home and remind us that wherever we are, together, is right where we belong.