I spent yesterday afternoon trotting in and out of stores, picking up an item or two here and there, nothing major dontcha know, until I froze with a little lamp in my hands.

It is normal, of course, to shop at this time of year. It is probably also normal to shop for oneself during the holidays. But all the stuff I bought yesterday was for me, and it's not as though I need any more stuff.

I'm already working hard to find places to put the stuff I already own. So what was I doing?

I looked at the lamp. The price was right and it would fit nicely on my nightstand (right next to the one I already have, I suppose) and it was a cute little thing, decorated with palm trees. Reminded me of home, the one I just moved back from, that is.

So that's what I was doing.

I've mentioned the geographical cure, the belief that changing your place of residence can fix what ails you. Yesterday I faced its cousin, retail therapy. 

I thought I was holding up pretty well, chugging through my first holiday season as a divorcée, newly moved away from the place where I had spent the last 20 years. But if I was seriously thinking about buying a lamp I don't need because it has palm trees on it and doesn't cost very much — and I was — maybe I'm not quite as okay as I thought.

And buying a lamp, or anything else, certainly won't fix it.

I put the lamp down and walked away from it (with a backward glance). I remembered what AA teaches you to do when you don't feel so cheerful, which is to do something for somebody else. Stop thinking about yourself and your little problems.

So I spent some extra time with my elderly parents last night, trying to be especially attentive to them and remembering to be grateful that they're still around. The urge to shop has left me, at least temporarily.

And if it comes back, I'm sure I can find something else to do for my folks, or for someone else. It's that time of year.

I’m as traditional and nostalgic as anyone, and a damn fine cook. But even though l love setting a beautiful table, and making Thanksgiving dinner, my Thanksgivings have been a series of unpleasant experiences. When I think back, this is what I remember:

● I was a child at my grandmother’s house in Minnesota. The uncles hung out in the living room, watching TV. The aunts worked in the overheated kitchen. My mom and dad both came from families of seven, so there were lots of aunts and uncles and cousins, only one of whom went to prison, later, for killing his stepfather. The Thanksgiving meal was served, with all of its strangeness: green and black olives, or that odd cylinder of cranberry. Dinner over, the Canadian Club whiskey would come out so the men could relax. The women cleaned up as my uncles, red-faced and swearing, played poker at the kitchen table. They were loud and scary and we were devout Methodists, who didn’t believe in drinking, smoking, gambling, dancing or going to see movies (except The Ten Commandments). The aunts, armed with leftovers and sleepy children, had to drag the men away. Result: Fear of drunken uncles, fear of drunks.

● I was older, a teenager, and I helped my mother at her grocery store, open seven days a week, 12 hours a day, except for Christmas Day. We closed on Thanksgiving, too, but only between noon and four. Thanksgiving meant racing back and forth between the store and the house, tending the turkey, making sure the house hadn’t burned down. My half-brother, brother, uncle, dad, mom and I would eat around 3. Then we’d race back and open the store, so other people could get ice cream, sugar, pickled herring, coffee, pies, Tampax... whatever it was all those Scandinavians needed for Thanksgiving. Result: Class resentment.

So, like many other people in this world, I am a child who comes from a divorced family. The only difference with me is that I was too young to understand when my parents split up, so I grew up not knowing any different. I thought it was normal. When I found out that someone actually lived with both of their parents, I figured they were of a different species.

As I grew up, I realized that these other people all looked at me that way. Although this seems like its going in a sad direction, I actually love my life and wouldn’t have it any other way. The advantage of not having to actually deal with the divorce part worked out a lot in my favor.

I was just around for the aftermath, which included getting double the amount of presents for Christmas, double the attention, double the love, and getting to live two different lives. When I am with my mom, it's just me and her, which is the fun yet dysfunctional aspect of it.

When I’m with my dad, it’s sort of the average all-American family including two kids, a dog, and a white picket fence — without the picket fence. I have a stepmother who was always good to me, and a younger brother and sister who I like to pretend to fight with just so I get the full stereotypical family experience. (I am a glass-half-full kind of girl, I guess). That’s just a little background check on me.

I am turning 21 years old on Thanksgiving Day. Obviously it will be hard to choose who to spend it with, being that it is also a holiday. Rather than worry, I just handle situations like this, so instead of choosing sides, I will make it sort of a game. I figure I’ll take myself on tour. I will stay with my mom for dinner, then go to one of my Aunt’s house’s, then my other Aunts’ house, and then to see my Father.

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 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. 

Hindsight is 20/20, or so the saying goes. Another way of saying that is "Monday morning quarterback," meaning someone who opines on just how the quarterback could have won the game, after the game is over. Or, to get hoity-toity, as the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said, life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backward.

Last weekend I traveled to New Hampshire to watch my oldest son's rugby club play their final games. They got hammered, yet at game's end I was caught offguard when several of the players (including my son) suddenly turned red-eyed while hugging, weeping, and sniffling.

These six-foot, 240-pound young men, lurching toward their adult lives, seemed to think nothing of slamming into the other team's players, only to break down in sobs after the fourth quarter.

They were bummed to lose, and to see the season come to a close.

Lunching together after the game, my son was sweetly reflective and swept both of us up in a tide of sentimentality. I never know exactly what he is thinking, except for a hint here or there. He's 19, so there's always a certain amount guesswork involved. But he kept saying how much he loved me and how much he missed the family.

I found myself unexpectedly longing for the good old days (I'm sure there were some) at the beginning of my marriage and in the years leading up to my son's birth. When my son alluded to his childhood, I guiltily remembered how brief that period really was.

My ex was at the game last weekend, and had spent the previous evening touring the campus, and hanging out with our son.

Our brief greeting on the rugby field was awkward. We seemed more like a strangers than two people who had spent 18 years married. I assured myself that distance was a good thing.

Still, there have been times during the last few days when I've thought how much lovelier things would be if we could all just live together as family again.

I finally realized today that one of my major problems is the fact that I absolutely cannot relax.

Okay, that may be an overstatement, but ask any of my friends and they will tell you that getting me to "chill out" is an enormous undertaking.

I spoke to my friend Rachel about it this weekend. "Yeah," she said. "But in some ways it's gotten better.  At least now you can actually sit through a whole movie."

Rachel and I have been friends since high school. High school, I think, was when my issues with anxiety started. (I've since realized that if you didn't have anxiety issues in high school you're abnormal.) Back then, not only could I not relax, I couldn't sit still either. I was constantly on the move.

Now that I'm an adult, it's kind of the same thing, except for the fact that there are times when I must sit still. Like, for instance, in meetings, doctors appointments, and all of the other grueling "grown up" stuff that we subject ourselves to.

Lately, I have been attributing my non-stop, go-go-go behavior to the fact that I am a single mother — I am quite busy. However, that idea became somewhat broken up when my therapist asked what a typical day was like for me. After explaining it to her, I realized that there are ways that I could make more time and slow down.

I told her that I get up for work at 7 AM, get in the shower, make Adrian breakfast, feed that cat, get us both dressed and out the door by 8AM. Then I drop Adrian at daycare, work at high speed from 9-5, pick Adrian up, drive home (sometimes stopping for groceries, diapers, etc.), start dinner, start cleaning up, eat dinner, and clean up some more.

Play with Adrian, do laundry or some other sort of cleaning.

We read books, I put Adrian to bed, I clean up some more and I start working on my freelance jobs. Then I clean up...AGAIN, and go to bed anywhere from 11:30 PM – 2 AM.

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...

Do you ever find yourself staring at your wedding ring? I remember when my husband first proposed I worked in a store that had great lighting so I would sit and stare at my engagement ring whenever I had the chance. It was so beautiful and sparkly and it represented such a bright future ahead of us.

Before we had kids I fantasized about my baby someday staring at the sparkles in the ring while wrapping his or her little fingers around it. When my babies came along, they didn't get to see much of the ring because my fingers were so swollen that I couldn't wear it. 

This was around the same time the marriage started to face some real trouble. When I lost the baby weight and got the ring back on my finger I hoped it would renew something. Maybe we could reclaim the love we once had just like I had reclaimed the right to wear my wedding ring.

I know I put way too much emphasis on symbolism. I don't know why my brain works that way. By the way, he presented the ring to me when he proposed while we were watching The First Wives Club on television. I'm pretty sure there's some irony there.

I find myself staring at my wedding ring a lot nowadays, too. I think about what it felt like to put that ring on my finger for the first time and how I never thought in a million years how our relationship would someday evolve (or deteriorate) into what it is today. I wear the ring because I'm married, but I don't see it as a symbol of a bright marital future.

I know many women in my situation don't even bother to wear their wedding rings anymore, but I do. I'm married. No matter what my heart says I'm still married. The ring announces this to everyone, and I'm fine with that. I just can't make the claim anymore that when I stare at my ring I'm thinking about all the glorious years ahead of us in wedded bliss.

People say that relationships require compromise. Well, punch line and drum roll please. How's this for ironic: Being divorced requires compromise as well.

That was one of the most challenging adjustments I had to make.

Divorce means that everyone has to make some sort of sacrifice: There won't be enough money, room, or time. When there are children involved, it's hard not to go a little nuts every day.

There's a constant reminder of adjustments that don't seem to rack up points in your favor. In fact, everybody feels pissed.

The kids are back from Fire Island. I've meditated and therapized myself throughout the summer. I'm calm, at peace, and ready to cultivate an attitude of gratitude.

Can you hear the tinkle of ancient Tibetan bells?

Amazing how easy it is to feel calm on a retreat, or at a health spa, or in the simple act of meditation. But taking this thoughtful way of life back to the real world, when everyone's trying to get out the door for school, is another thing.

And when it gets to compromise, it's very hard to cultivate a sense of peace. Why can't we blame someone else, or feel sorry for ourselves?

But chasing thoughts in that direction is bound to lead to an attitude explosion that does more damage than good.

So, after every mountaintop experience, I prepare myself for the inevitable adjustment back into the real world. My goal is to breathe myself into a state of acceptance.

I am truly as happy as a clam in my kitchen, where the air is thick with smoke as I whip up my favorite recipes. Feeding the kids is one of my simplest and most direct acts of love.

Except what happens when one of the kids is a no-show? When the cell phone plan doesn't work, and a child chooses to bunk down at Dad's house?

Should moms just accept the fact that teens roam around, and be thankful when they turn up at the dinner table three nights a week?