All that has transpired among my family this holiday takes longer to digest than even the biggest turkey holiday.

My mother and step-father (still getting used to calling this stranger any sort of father) swept through town town in a fit of self-importance, leaving behing gifts from their recent Mexican holiday.

The dishes were barely dry and it was time for a seven-hour drive to upstate NY where my sister and I removed my father's car from his possession for his own safety (dementia has robbed him of his driving skills). We lied and said we accidentally crashed it but actually put it into storage. 

Holidays...what fun. But who had my back through all the bickering and tears? Rob. Gotta hand it to that guy. He's a good one to have aroun.

Friday morning and I'm giving thanks for Turkey Day with our best friends yesterday. Sam and I have lived a thousand miles or more from our families of origin for the last 14 Thanksgivings.

Getting back to our folks — especially now that it requires four tickets — is a once-every-few-years event. Out in Portland, where most of our closest friends are in the same gravy boat, we've done the traditional feast together sans the annual family drama almost every year.

Sometimes I miss my family, mourn the chance to have my kids hang out with their cousins, but when it comes right down to it, my favorite way to spend the holiday is right here with the extended family we've created.

And this year, our first year back together, it was nice to be on neutral ground. No moms or dads or in-laws for anyone to please. Where our kids may not have blood relatives, but they do have a circle of friends they've known since birth. And the same kind of familial love that goes with it.

Plus, we'll have enough of that next month.

Early morning I'm up before dawn, and up before the kids — trying to be up before them anyway. There bunked-up in the other room and their chatter is all holidays.

Roxie says, "And Hannukah, too, don't forget."

Lila says, "And Christmas is in Hannukah this year."

Then two little voices together: "And Grammy is coming!"

And I may not be excited about this with them, but I'm equally excited for them.

Thanksgiving week has all the wind knocked out of me. Could just be my reaction to going down, down, down the rabbit hole. The Holidays are here.

Only thing I know is the only thing I want to do is curl up under my big old comforter and sleep. It’s the lack of time that has me feeling so defeated. My kids don’t have school all week and we don’t have childcare, don’t have the money for the extra child care, I should say, so what happens? I don’t have time to work.

We are caught right smack in the center exactly what I feared getting back into this. I have no time to work because we can’t afford to cover the business hours I need so jobs are left unfinished leaving me feeling further defeated and my pay further behind, which adds up to less childcare that we can afford and fewer things completed. It goes on like this until I’m right where I am now.

One big miserable puddle of blah. And I blame it on the marriage, when actually I should blame it on me.

My reasoning, skewed as it may be, is that when we were apart a couple things were absolute: I had several days every week to work because the kids were with Sam and I had to make it work because the alternatives were homelessness and starvatation.

This week, I’m giving thanks for my two beautiful, healthy girls, and the ability I have to back up, reconsider, and try it again. But I'm also questioning how much of my current situation is a self-fulfilling prophecy and why I can't have the structure to make room for work in the same way I did when I was separated.

I have to fess up. My secret is not much of a surprise, I'm sure, which hardly makes it a secret, but still I'll feel better straight out saying it. I want my apartment back.

Hold on, now. I'm not saying I want to leave Sam again. That's not it. And I'm not saying I don't want to live with Sam anymore. That's not it either.

I do want to live with him, just not all the time. I do not want to live with anyone all the time.

Maybe this makes me a loser, but it's the truth, so I'm saying it.

I spent all morning re-arranging my office and you know what? In the end I realized creating what I want there is impossible. No matter how many ways I move the furniture, it's all still in that one room, in that one house where we all live. All of us. Together. All the time.

Here's my fantasy: Sam and I get an apartment a few blocks from our house, and we furnish it with the leftover stuff we didn't sell in the garage sale we never had after we moved back in together.

I stay at the apartment a couple nights a week, he stays at the apartment a couple nights a week (if he wants) and three or four nights a week we all stay together, one big happy, nuclear family, at the house.

The girls have each parent five nights a week and two parents about half the time.

Before we separated I'd never lived alone, had no clue how amazing, how liberating, solitude can be.

We have all these ideas about how marriages and families should look, but the reality is parenting small children is brutal. Many of our families are fragmented, parceled out across the country. Thousands of miles apart.

There's no reprieve coming from grandparents, aunts and uncles, or older cousins. No one to take the kids for a couple nights or a couple hours. No villages to raise our children. Our therapist is always asking what we can do to create more space for ourselves.

I told my mother-in-law a little lie on the phone last weekend when she called to talk about which American Girl doll should she get Roxie for Christmas. Sam's parents are visiting for the holidays.

We decided on Kit, the Depression-era girl. I said I thought Roxie would like that. Kit would be fine.

I said, "I'm so excited you are coming out for Christmas." It was a lie. And I said it again.

Not a total lie, but mostly more false than true. It's been weird with my in-laws since the split and reunion.

I used to say Sam's parents were much easier visitors than mine. Even enjoyed them. They like their time in the mornings and they stay in a hotel, not my house. Most of the places where my parents are anxious, they are easy-going.

At least, I thought they were easy going.

Actually they're just unwilling to acknowledge anything difficult. My mother-in-law has built herself a happy little Donna Reed world and just you try smuggling any unpleasant kind of truth past that white picket fence.

Try having a conversation about anything real. Oh-no-no. Ignore it, whatever it is, it will go away. If not we can always pretend.

Early on in my separation I gave her a stuttering, obviously uncomfortable five-minute apology for something I thought I'd mishandled. Said this was unfamiliar ground, and I was sorry. Nothing I did or didn't do was meant to hurt or offend, it was just, I didn't know what to do.

She said, "We'd like to have portraits taken of the girls, if that's okay."

Not "Thanks." Not "I appreciate your candor." Not even "OK."

I wasn't sure I'd spoken out loud.

It can make you crazy.

We haven't talked about the separation. We sit down like I did not leave Sam for two years. But it's there in the room, just under the over-stretched veneer.

Probably be there for ever. Unresolved emotions always at the door.

Off topic here, I know, but my mind is still spinning around Obama, President-elect Obama and the Democrat's election night party last Tuesday in Portland. Until I write this, I won't be able to write anything else.

I took Roxie down to the Oregon Convention Center for the big party, past her bedtime before we even got there. She's been hooked on Obama since the primary last winter, back when she was half-way through kindergarten.

That this will be her earliest political memory. This election. This night. This president. Wow. I mean. Wow. Me, I'm stuck with a 36-year-old snapshot image of Richard Nixon's motorcade passing. Warren, OH, five days after my third birthday.

But, Roxie. She's got Obama and I know just the moment I want her to hold, the one she'll detail when she tells my great-grandchildren about the night he was elected.

There are 7,000, maybe, 8,000 people at convention center and John McCain is on both big screens conceding the race. We're at back edge of the crowd where it's less claustrophobic, Roxie on my hip so her head is the same height as most adults in the room.

You can't hear McCain over the noise.

There's an older African American woman, late 60s, early 70s, coming out toward the edge from deeper in the crowd and she stops in front of Roxie. Two teenagers behind her stop, too.

The woman takes Roxie's hand and holds it, looks her brown eyes into Roxie's blues.

She says. "We did this, baby. You and me."

And, I realize, for the first time in their lives I have hope for world my girls are growing into.

My husband has accepted a position overseas for a year. The kids and I won't be going with him. We're staying put while he goes and gets an apartment and lives a life without a wife and kids.

It's a weird situation. We're going to be separated by distance but we aren't going to be separated as far as our marital status goes...at least I don't think we are. If that's the intent it hasn't been discussed. So I'll still be married, but my husband won't live with us. He'll visit once or twice during this time away, but for the most part we'll live separate lives during this work assignment.

I think this is a step in the right direction. I'm so conflicted over whether we should stay together or not that sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live without him for a while. Will I miss him? Will he miss me? Will the kids freak out without Daddy around? It's like a trial separation without all the hubbub of a real, intentional marital separation.

Honestly, I don't know if I could dream up a better scenario.

The last time he went away for an extended period of time for work — which was for a few months — I was glad he was gone. We were right in the middle of our worst difficulties and not having him around was a real relief. We have since been through marital counseling, but I don't know that it really helped all that much. I'd generally resolved to just muddle through and see how things turn out. This new development makes things very interesting indeed.

We still have a few months before he leaves, but we're preparing now for the time he'll be away. Can a damaged marriage survive a long separation? I guess we'll find out. 

I promised a report on my latest trip to upstate New York to take of my father who has Alzheimer's Disease, and the level of support Rob mustered around it. In a nutshell: Dad is much sicker, Rob is more supportive.

My father isn't the only one transformed by his disease. I'm enjoying spending time with him, the man who made my childhood miserable. And Rob is stepping up with phone calls to me while I'm away, flowers upon my return home, and the composure of a good listener and sincerely concerned friend.
Maybe being needed brings out the best in us.

My father's need opened my heart and allowed me to see things between him and me in a new way. I no longer resent his past mistakes or withhold my assistance.

Rob sees me sad over my father's messy decline, and he bolsters me up.

It's a ripple effect — the waves gently wash over our resistance, softening us toward each other.

There are moments when Rob is just the husband I need. 

Two months into the school year and every week Roxie's homework is due on Friday. She gets these four-page packets on Monday, has all week to work them. This is the routine. It does not change.

Ten-word spelling list, journal page, math page, reading log, and a page to practice her 10 spelling words. Never mind that I think this is a ridiculous amount of work for a first grader.

Never mind that Roxie has visual processing stuff — like everyone in my family has processing stuff — and it makes writing a bear for her. This week she did so much by Tuesday, I gave her Wednesday afternoon off.

Plenty of time, and not much to finish with Sam Thursday night.

Accept they didn't.

Maybe this should not infuriate me. We do this every single week, this homework routine. It does not change.

Sam and I work with her 50-50. I told him Wednesday exactly what needed to be done Thursday. I get home late Thursday night, kids are in bed and it still needs to be done.

I want to be furious with him, but I remember something. Sam has an auditory processing disorder. He does not learn by ear and he does not retain information given verbally — he does not think this is true. But it is.

Most of his family is this way. I've never sat at a quieter dinner table.

And here's impact of learning/processing differences on a relationship — my relationship. Because me, I'm just the opposite. Just like Roxie. My ears are everything.

How I understand the world is conversation and I need lots of it to thrive. Reading is tedious, I'm slow and remember almost nothing.

Sam knows the world with his eyes, it's all visual. The way I get little from a book and don't remember it anyway, that's what conversation is for Sam.

I know these things. If I don't write it down for Sam he will not remember. It's completely counter intuitive to me though, so I forget. And I'm not angry with him, but...

In my family learning disabilities are so widespread we joke that "typical" kids are "special." Needing special education services, that's "normal."

Three of my four nieces and nephews traveled, or are traveling, through public schools on IEPs (school speak for Individual Education Plans — the annual goals set by parents and school officials for kids with learning differences.)

We don't stop at your standard disorders either, oh no. Way too simple. These kids muck it up by being "twice exceptional" — meaning they qualify for both talented and gifted programs and special services.

Me, I'm about as ADD as they co... Look, something shiny!

And I have visual processing stuff I couldn't begin to explain within the space of this blog. Or to even understand in the space of the 39 years I've lived it.

Last week I read a new study on the higher rate of divorce among parents of kids with ADHD.

It says parents of ADHD kids are twice as likely to divorce by the kids' eighth birthday. Says higher stress from parenting these kids leaks into communication among the adults. Everyone is more stressed. And angry. Confrontational and ready to bolt.

Makes sense. But there's one glaring flaw in the study.

The risk factors in this study don't include the impact of mom and/or dad's ADD/ADHD on the marriage. And guess what? Turns out the apple really does not fall far from the tree. Show me an ADHD kid and nine times out ten, I'll show you the parent they inherited from.

I don't question the impact raising hard kids has on a family. But how much of it is truly the stress of managing a special needs child and how much of it is the stress of managing their own special needs?