The Holiday Season; The Fuzzy End Of The Divorce Lolly Pop

I have wrestled with this topic for about two weeks....in fact...I have avoided this space for almost as long while trying to figure out how to approach this. So here it is;

This will be the first Thanksgiving that I will not be spending with my children.

When my ex wife and I first separated we agreed that we would figure out a way for the five of us to spend the major holidays together. And it worked...for a while...but last year it became apparent it was time for us to do something different. So this Easter we split up the day...I had the kids in the morning and she had them in the afternoon. The kids found it difficult but we thought that Easter would be the best holiday to start a new routine to make things easier for the kids during the Holiday Season.

The ex wife and I started discussing Thanksgiving about a month ago. For a variety of reasons we decided that it would be best for me to spend the morning with the kids and that in the afternoon she would take them to her brother's for dinner. The kids are excited to be spending the day with their cousins. In fact, one of them remarked that holidays are supposed to be spent with aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins.

To her credit, my ex wife is concerned and interested in how I am going to spend the rest of my day. My first choice would be to spend the entire day with my kids. But this simply is not possible. Divorce is hard, its hard on kids and its hard on their parents...but we...the parents...were the ones who failed to make our marriage work...so in our divorce its right that we make compromises to make things easier and better for the kids.

So my ex wife and I compromised to make the best of a difficult part of divorce. And with any compromise you give up something to get something....but sometimes compromise means that what you get is the fuzzy end of the lolly pop...