This post was hard to write, I want to tell you about great family times and fun games, and the “Tom Cruise”-talent Simon showed. But at the same time, I missed Nele. This is the first Christmas without her, in the house where we had just moved her back to during quarantine, a month before she passed away.
So I decide to tell you both sides, because life is the good and the bad. And even during exciting road trips, they can all show up. They just don’t have to bring us down.
“There are times in our lives when we have to realize our past is precisely what it is, and we cannot change it. But we can change the story we tell ourselves about it, and by doing that, we can change the future.”
Eleanor Brown
Christmas Day
I love spending time with my kids. A weekend at home, going to their town, road tripping with Karlien and the anual Christmas gathering with the whole family. Each year it is a different place, looking for new things or going closure to someone who can’t take that long of a break. But mostly always the same people: the kids, their Dad and his wife (sometimes step son) and me. And we always fill it with the spirit of the season.
This year we started of without Maarten and Elizabeth, since it was the year for the in-laws, a new chapter in our lives, but we know how to adjust.
We didn’t change Laura’s famous breakfast muffins and we went for a turkey dinner… smoked turkey and smoked fish, freshly smoked in the crisp Pennsylvania air. And we ended with drinks, “professionally mad cocktails, and games. Times we cherish with family.
Walking through West Chester
On the second day of Christmas I took a nice long walk through West Chester and the woods behind the house. The area is filled with memories of Nele, memories of the few weeks we got to spend in quarantine together and places of her time in West Chester University and her live there.
I must say I found this to be a peaceful walk and my heart settled in to more acceptance then before. This road trip was a good trip with a lot of calming perspective and today, I put the cherry on top.
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