Traditional Family Holiday

It takes time to establish a family tradition. Prepare, execute, rinse and repeat, if you will. There's mom's famous cornbread dressing. There's dad's Christmas wallet. There's setting up the tree the day after Thanksgiving.
Those traditions in my family have been fairly fluid. I respect that, because we're flexible. We're willing to adapt traditions based on schedules and the needs of the individual members of the family, but we still gather. We still celebrate.
Here's one item we seem to stick to each holiday. One member of the family ends up in the emergency room.
This year, it was mom.
Mom and I got up the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, happy to be alive. We put harnesses on the dogs. We left the house for a walk. On the way back, mom slipped in leaves and went down like a bag of bricks, one leg in front of her, the other curled up behind her body. She landed hard on her left side, yelling out in pain. I was horrified. She looked like she'd broken her arm. I couldn't make myself leave her until she'd calmed down enough to sit up.
Then I raced back to the house, just a minute away, grabbed the keys to the car and drove back to retrieve her. She was standing by the time I arrived, and climbed into the car. We agreed not to tell dad.
At the house, she quietly asked me to drive her to the urgent care clinic. "I want someone to tell me it's just a sprain, because my ankle is really hurting."
Yeah, I really wish they could have told us that too. Because while it wasn't the ankle, it was the leg - not a sprain, a break.
So for the next 4 to 6 weeks, mom will have a splint on her leg. Fortunately, the bone didn't shift, so it is in a good location to heal. However, because she has neuropathy, the doctor is concerned that she wouldn't feel a shift if it did occur. So she will be returning to the doctor who will take more xrays to make sure she doesn't shift the bone during the healing process. If it does, she will need to have surgery to put a plate and screw in that location.
We are trying to avoid that. After the traditional gathering in the emergency room, we would like to be flexible about the outcome. No surgery this year, please. That doesn't fit around our schedules.
So I stayed a bit longer in Alabama this Thanksgiving. I am sitting in the guest bedroom right now, typing this out after packing for the trip home. There are thanksgiving leftovers in my cooler from the meal I prepared by myself while mom sat in a chair at the table and chopped vegetables.
By the way, the meal went great. Dad even had seconds of sweet potato casserole, and my dad doesn't eat sweet potato. That's something I won't forget for a while.
And as I leave, my thoughts remain with them - that they will keep their wits about them. That as mom heals, she'll stay safe. That they will keep their tempers in check as mom grows increasingly impatient with her confinement. Dad is not used to finding things in the house - that's mom's domain. But moving that walker over carpet is very difficult for my mom right now, so he will be the hunter and gatherer in the family for at least a month.
It's a real strain on that young marriage.
Happy Thanksgiving, to all your families and to all your traditions.

--Laura