One thing that really seemed to change when I got divorced were our family traditions. Suddenly, they seemed a little empty when it was just the two of us. It became almost easier just to forget about all of our old traditions rather than remind my daughter that her father wasn’t there to share them.
For us, the first holidays that came up after the divorce were the summer ones, July 4th, and because we live in Utah, July 24th. Parades, barbeques and fireworks were something we did as a family. That first year we ate sandwiches and watched the fireworks from our balcony.
It was sad, I had to learn how to celebrate just the two of us. It became very important to me that we have new traditions, ones that the two of us came up with and shared.
One of my favorites is our end of school breakfast. My best friend and I got divorced around the same time. We were both working Mom’s with latchkey children. Our kids got themselves off to school in the morning and came home alone each afternoon.
We decided to make the last day of school a celebration. My friend and I take our children out to breakfast on the last day of school. This is a big deal because the kids never see us on school mornings but we wanted them to know that their success is important to us.
We take two hours, have breakfast with our kids, talk, laugh and celebrate that they made it through another year, and so did we. The kids look forward to it, in early spring they start talking about where we are going and each year we talk about breakfasts past. Neither of our children are early birds so there is always much laughter about the time each of them fell asleep in their breakfast.
I wonder if we can convince them to do it when they are in college?