"Who is he?" the Good Doctor asked me about Jack, my new man. I looked at her quizzically. "Where have you seen this person before?" she said. "He must remind you of someone in your past for you to be so comfortable with him so quickly."

Oh. We'd agreed that my ex, Edgar, was my father. (Yikes!)

I thought for a moment (one of the very expensive moments that come in a 50-minute hour) and drew a blank.

"Nobody," I said. "He doesn't remind me of anybody else."

He was far more honest and open than the other men this sick puppy had been involved with. And he was eager to help me with pretty much anything — something else I'd never seen a lot.

I concluded that he was different from all who had come before, which made him ideal.

There are none so blind as those who will not see... 

Jack and I have been together for months now, and I think I've figured out who he is: both of my controlling parents.

Oh, dear.

This didn't occur to me until I read Elaina's post from Friday. "We seek," she wrote, "not only what we know, but what we know will force us to grow."

Great. As if living once again in the same town as my parents wouldn't be enough to stretch me.

I have no idea yet what I'll do with this insight. I have decided that running down the road screaming isn't an option.

For now.

I know that when I'm not mad at Jack, he's fabulous. When I am mad at him, I'll try to recall that my history may have something to do with it.

Either way, he's a blessing. And way cuter than many of the other hard lessons I've chosen for myself.    

My in-laws come for Christmas next week. It's not my holiday, Christmas, and I despise the excess of it, but I'm a sucker for tradition. Also, the tree smells nice.

It matters to me that my girls keep the customs of their grandmothers and their grandmothers and their grandmothers before. That they remain linked, and that they understand all the cultures that made them.

I can share only half, the Jewish rituals passed down through my people. So, I'll make potato latkes and spin the dreidel with them, light the menorah each night and teach them the blessings.

But I'm grateful Sam's parents can visit with their red velvet cake and, hopefully, stories waking up Christmas morning when they were kids. Pass down what I can't.

I bitch about Sam's parents, resent the "stuff" passed on to him and so to me, because it happens this way: what you do not deal with, the problems you don't stand down, they don't disappear, they are passed to the next generation.

Merry Christmas.

There's a present for you. No, for real.

I'm looking at it as a gift this year, an opportunity to better understand why Sam is who he is. To understand why I chose him as my partner, and after leaving him, why I made the same choice again.

Some people say we marry our parents; another perspective is we partner with people who present a chance to work where we need it most. We seek, not only what we know, but what we know will force us to grow.

And we go back until the lesson is learned.

What I've learned: I'm not going to change Sam's family. No matter what I do, no matter what truth I try to shock them with, they will never get real. They will always avoid the uncomfortable and when the small talk plays out, 99 times out of 100 they'll choose silence over depth.

I started dating before my divorce was final. Maybe you did too, so maybe you don't think I'm going to hell.

I don't know if my father thinks that's what will happen, but he certainly wasn't happy about my behavior. Initially, I understood his concern: my new relationship might cause problems as I ended the old one.

But it turns out that Florida, despite its backwardness in many other areas, is remarkably enlightened about divorce. Under Florida law, there are only two reasons to end a marriage: the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage, or the mental incapacity of one of the spouses. Under Florida law, I learned that, as a rule, adultery doesn't enter into the equation.

If, say, I had exhausted the marital assets on trips to Fiji for the boyfriend and me, the court probably would have frowned on that. But since the two alcoholics in my marriage had already exhausted most of their assets, I saw no risk.

I explained this to my father more than once. But now that he's old, his mind isn't so flexible anymore, and he could not, would not, wrap it around the idea that it was okay for my life to go on while I divorced. He glowered a lot and made menacing pronouncements about the earful he would have for me when the time was right (which, thankfully, it never was).

To this day he hasn't met the new man in my life.

One morning at breakfast, shortly after my divorce was final, he asked a simple question. "Sondra, how old are you?"

I looked at him, figuring this was the beginning of the tirade he'd been holding for months. "Forty-eight," I replied.

"Oh," he said. I think he had forgotten.

And then he added, "You'd better be glad you're grown and nobody can tell you what to do any more."

Really? Nobody can? Not even you, Pop?

Wow. I guess Daddy's Little Girl is an adult at last, and all I had to do was get divorced.

I was in the sock section of the men's department the other night, perusing the rows of dark knitted things, when I remembered I had no reason to be there.

All through our marriage, I had bought Edgar socks and underwear for Christmas. I'd get him something more interesting, too, but always socks and underwear because he was hell on those. It was like he could wear them out just by looking at them.

This year, I hope someone will buy my ex some socks. I am tempted to get him some, out of habit, and because I'm sure he needs them, but will refrain.

Buying those socks — bags, bundles, three-packs, an occasional single pair — was one of my wifely duties. I found surprising satisfaction in seeing to it that Ed's heels and toes were covered inside his shoes. It was the kind of thing he couldn't be bothered with, and I was good at. Isn't that one of the things marriage is about?

The Good Doctor says I liked being married. I guess she's right. Obviously I'm pretty sentimental about those dang socks. But you know what? A month into it, I seem to like being divorced, too.

I am free to create new holiday traditions for myself and the dogs and cats as well as to revisit some old ones.

The other night I watched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with my parents for the first time in many, many moons. (We watched it together the first time it aired many, many, many moons ago.)

The experience was bittersweet, but this is a bittersweet time of year — no matter what the ads and "sounds of the season" insist.

Nothing will be as it was, nor will any of it be perfect.

My days of buying socks and shorts for Ed at Christmas are over. And that's just the way it goes.

I'll find something else to do with my time and effort.

I spent yesterday afternoon trotting in and out of stores, picking up an item or two here and there, nothing major dontcha know, until I froze with a little lamp in my hands.

It is normal, of course, to shop at this time of year. It is probably also normal to shop for oneself during the holidays. But all the stuff I bought yesterday was for me, and it's not as though I need any more stuff.

I'm already working hard to find places to put the stuff I already own. So what was I doing?

I looked at the lamp. The price was right and it would fit nicely on my nightstand (right next to the one I already have, I suppose) and it was a cute little thing, decorated with palm trees. Reminded me of home, the one I just moved back from, that is.

So that's what I was doing.

I've mentioned the geographical cure, the belief that changing your place of residence can fix what ails you. Yesterday I faced its cousin, retail therapy. 

I thought I was holding up pretty well, chugging through my first holiday season as a divorcée, newly moved away from the place where I had spent the last 20 years. But if I was seriously thinking about buying a lamp I don't need because it has palm trees on it and doesn't cost very much — and I was — maybe I'm not quite as okay as I thought.

And buying a lamp, or anything else, certainly won't fix it.

I put the lamp down and walked away from it (with a backward glance). I remembered what AA teaches you to do when you don't feel so cheerful, which is to do something for somebody else. Stop thinking about yourself and your little problems.

So I spent some extra time with my elderly parents last night, trying to be especially attentive to them and remembering to be grateful that they're still around. The urge to shop has left me, at least temporarily.

And if it comes back, I'm sure I can find something else to do for my folks, or for someone else. It's that time of year.

A year ago I'd just ejected my alcoholic husband from our home. That was an achievement, to be sure, but nearly all of his stuff remained. I was exhausted and a long way from free.

I'd been invited to join my extended family for Thanksgiving at my oldest brother's place. But not even the prospect of laughter and one of my sister-in-law's fabulous holiday feasts was enough to convince me to drive 11 hours and submit to the queries about Edgar and me and our marriage, however loving.

So I ate turkey with a friend at a diner and promised myself a normal Thanksgiving this year.

Well, what is that, exactly? When I was growing up, it meant being part of a passel of relatives and friends gathered around my mother's groaning board. When I was grown, it meant heaping my own table with too much food and collecting as many members of my tribe who needed a holiday meal as I could find. After I married, it meant driving a couple of hours to take Ed's mother out to eat — and that occasionally meant eating a truly depressing turkey dinner.

Now? My hostess this year, my other brother's girlfriend, took me on a tour of her lovely home and I became quite wistful, missing the house I love and am letting go. I envied her preparations with food and drink, and changing her clothes at the last minute, even her having to get up from the meal to make the forgotten gravy.

But I also basked in the clever conversation, the relaxation and warmth, the complete absence of the enmity and frustration I'd grown accustomed to in the last years of my marriage.

And I really was grateful: that's what Thanksgiving is about.