My First Holiday Without My Mom

I thought I’d be relieved, but I’m not.

My mom and my uncle. Not the felon uncle. The other uncle.

We were never a festive family. Christmas meant the dreaded trip to Columbus, Ohio, to see my Bible-thumping uncle and his family.

My aunt somehow talked without opening her mouth. Their cat was a fat, evil Tasmanian devil that regularly drew blood.

My cousins were all boys many years older than I was and the two oldest were permanently in graduate school studying Very Deep Things. I never understood a single thing they discussed in conversation.

It was Hell.

But at least there was turkey. Turkey makes everything better.

And that’s what I’m missing right now. I mean, obviously I miss my mom. But I really, really miss her baked sweet potatoes, swimming in butter and brown sugar, with little nipples of toasted mini marshmallows dotted here and there.

I will never be able to make sweet potatoes exactly the way she made them. Or scalloped potatoes, or macaroni salad, or a hundred other things I could name.

Yes, I can make them, but they won’t be the same.

I never really understood what the kids meant by the term “triggered”, but now I do. There are triggers everywhere.