Instructions for surviving the first holiday after a divorce

[justababyduck]

Don't cook a turkey. It'll just make you sad. Decide it's much too much food for one anyway. Make a beef kielbasa instead. Tell yourself that you're German and that it's appropriate, though if asked you wouldn't be able to explain how. Decide to make mashed potatoes because you have seen her make them a thousand times and you think you remember how. Remember that she got the peeler and the masher in the divorce only once all the potatoes are scrubbed and ready. Peel the potatoes with a knife and tell yourself that your daddy did it this way in the navy and that if he could do it then so can you. Cut the potatoes into pieces the way she used to. Turn the music up. Sing along. Try to lose yourself in the work and the music. Have a cigarette while the potatoes are boiling. Watch how the wind and the rain steal the smoke from your porch. Wonder who is making this weather and if they are doing it because of you. Douse cigarette and put the remainder with its post-incendiary brethren. End up mashing potatoes with a fork and wondering why on earth you made so many. Add milk, sour cream, a little salt, and huge amounts of butter. Find the end results extra lumpy, but good enough. Finish cooking dinner. Make only four of the "Brown and Serve" rolls. Know at least two of them will go un-eaten. Remember that you have no oven pads when getting bread from oven. Use paper towel and burn yourself on the hot metal. Put together a plate and sit in your mostly empty living room to eat off an old trunk of your roommate's. Try to be thankful. Try not to think of her. Try to study. Try not to cry. Fail at all these things.

Later...

Decide you don't really miss her. Realize you miss having someone to be with. Drink hot mead and miss being loved.