While this year's Thanksgiving wasn't the first year celebrated without my mom; there was an undeniable shift in my family's atmosphere. I don't know if it's normal that families evolve over time, for better and worse, but the changes I've seen in my own have been nothing short of unnerving to me. My dad, sister, grandmother, and I drove a crippling 11-hour drive to the Wyoming-Idaho border to visit relatives we haven't seen in a few years. I kept complaining of the drive, the rental car's unaccommodating backseat and what it was doing to my aching calves (plus, driving through Wyoming has never exactly been declared entertaining now, has it?).

This was the first time we've ever gone out of town for Thanksgiving, typically we have a home, a turkey, and take in some family friends to spread the holiday cheer around. Yet, this year, I noticed that, with the exception of distant family a state away, we were suddenly the exact prototype of people we'd always opened our doors to on the holidays. It's a strange feeling: realizing things have somehow shifted around in the night and no longer resemble what they once were. This is strange to say, but up until this year, I never thought that I'd ever grow into the adult who isn't close to her family. As a child, I saw extended family so frequently that it never seemed an issue that we would inevitably remain close; yet, now, as everyone's growing older and busier, it's difficult to even coordinate family events with my nine-year-old cousins who are hopping between little leagues and play date sleepovers.

Friends often ask me if I miss my mom during the holidays. The answer is a little complicated. From my own experience, I've never missed her for reasons that may be expected or typical; I never miss the woman she was when she died. There are pieces of her that pull on my nostalgia from time to time, traits and characteristics that she exhibited in my younger years, but for the most part, I remember and feel homesick for someone who had ceased to exist long before she passed away.

My dad pulled out one of his infamous home videos from storage over break, predictably laughing alongside his narrating self in the videos to his own jokes while my videotaped mother rolled her eyes and ignored his corny remarks. If anything, it's that fabricated woman, part imagination from my own childish conception of her, part home video tributary whose presence I miss. It's difficult to define grieving, or my lack thereof, if I'm not entirely positive that my feelings are considerably "normal." Whenever I meet other people my age who have lost people close to them, I'm curious to see if they are similarly as relatively unaffected as I am, or if I am suffering from some sort of prolonged emotional detachment.

These are just some of the thoughts on family as Christmas lights begin to usher in the new season of Gap commercials and Starbucks Egg Nogg. As my own Thanksgiving table and its members changed so radically from the years past, I wonder how this year's affected other families and their own stories.