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As an American Thanksgiving only comes once a year, and thus so does the Snoopy float, the pride of Macy's parade.
Smiling, Rey makes sure to hit record as the show begins, using the fancy DVR that Ben had gotten her when they were still dating, in that short time when, knowing nevertheless that they were meant to be together, they had kept separate apartments before they merged their lives completely.
Pushing at the buttons, she sets the details and the timer and turns the television off; today, they'll have little use for it.
They’ll stay home this holiday, cuddled up like a pair of feral wolf pups.
Sharing a leisurely breakfast, still wrapped in tangled sheets, maple syrup ending up on the pillowcases, they linger over coffee before setting off for a walk in the ravine near their house. She makes tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch - burns the bread badly, but Ben eats it anyway, holding the mangled mess out of her reach with those stupidly long arms of his when she tries to take the burned offering back.
They fall asleep in the big camping chair that's not meant to hold two but does anyway, tucked away in a red plaid blanket, a warm contrast to the golden-tinged backyard of their quiet brownstone, and pay little attention to the hustle and bustle they can hear dimly in the distance.
Debate, when they wake, leftovers or homemade pasta for dinner, and then eat treasured popsicles Rey finds hidden in the freezer as they decide on last night's take-out.
Think little of turkey.
Ben’s mother Leia had barely blinked an eye when they'd told her they wouldn't be attending the family melee this year - a sign of how far they'd all come. That smallest small flicker of Leia's eye, the acceptance and tentative suggestion that followed - 'Dinner, the four of us? Next week when it's quieter? The steak place you and your father like?' - had made all the hours discussing boundaries and expectations in the nondescript office of a family mediator all so decidedly worth it.
The understanding couldn’t have come at a better time.
Truth is, Ben loves his family - the lot of them, loud, rambunctious and quarrelsome and loving and overwhelming as they are, just as they love him. But he is quiet where they are boisterous and wry where they are outgoing - and neither he nor Rey have much social battery to spare at the moment.
It had been a long fall, the two of them too often separated, by work, by fate, by sheer bloody luck, and equally too exhausted by the emotional impact of all they'd discovered on her long-awaited return to London.
Rey cares little for Thanksgiving, other than in fond amusement while watching her newfound beloved American family as they make ready all their questionable food choices and go about their beloved, funny traditions, but the experience of it brings her own family issues forward in ways in which she was far from ready.
Christmas is coming. Her favourite holiday – a time of joy, of reflection, of family.
And she'd just received definite confirmation that hers had left her behind.
Standing in an old drafty hall in a tiny village just outside of London, Ben's steadying presence at her back and the bright sun of an English summer already a distant memory, she'd learned what she'd already long known. Despite all her patience, despite all the years she'd spent waiting, her parents were gone and they were never coming back.
At the moment, it made it hard, somehow – despite all she knew of Ben's struggles with his family, despite all the struggles and the foundation they'd built together – to join in with that boisterous crowd.
They needed time, she'd thought, watching him approach, oh so carefully, that fraught question of passing on that treasured tradition of an annual Solo-Organa holiday feast of bickering and gravy, turkey and pie and teasing remarks bearing too much truth.
She needed time to mourn, she thought, just as Ben needed time to mourn with her. They needed time, time to let it go, time to move beyond all that she'd once hung on to so dearly – (her past, imagined idyllic future family moments) – she needed time to accept her loss before moving forward with this found family she adored.
Time to accept time to find a way to let the past die so she - they - might build something new.
And so it is that she takes what she needs – time – as does Ben.
And so it is that they sit in their big bright kitchen, forks deep in reheated cashew chicken, her on her husband's big warm lap as he sits at the island that sits in the middle of it, the last of the long-forgotten popsicles awaiting them in the freezer, and they take the time to share a moment together.
They'll fall asleep later on the couch, she imagines, three movies deep into a Mel Brooks marathon, and when she blinks herself awake in the dark of the middle of the night, she'll spend a few moments studying his wonderful, sleepy face before she pokes him awake. He’ll smile sleepily, grumble a little of her waking him before he sweeps her up and takes her into their waiting bedroom before they make it into their ensuite bathroom to brush their teeth standing at the same sink before they go to sleep in the same big, cool bed - cuddled up close, their heads close together no matter how far apart the pillows.
They'll sleep late the next too, ignore the call of the world – and they'll visit with his family another day.
She and her other half need this, to celebrate Thanksgiving this way, this year, they need a chance to lean together, support each other, love each other, and share in the love and the joy they find so often in each other.
Their kin will understand, for, after all, understanding - that's what family is for.
She's ever so grateful for that.