My Thanksgiving at Mountainside was my most memorable Thanksgiving. I didn’t miss my drunken relatives. I didn’t miss my overbearing relatives. I didn’t miss any relatives at all.
I missed my wife and daughter, to be sure, but still, it was an unusually cheerful Thanksgiving because I shared it with people I felt at home with, and with whom I felt a commonality of purpose. I realized there were families of relation and families of creation, and one could feel more at home with the latter than with the former.
That I wasn’t getting plastered to the hairline to insulate myself from my relatives only added to the fun.