It started with a small request. A pumpkin pie. G asked for a pumpkin pie.

Then, it started to spread. Maybe we could put up some lights. Not a whole tree or anything, but maybe a few lights. Then, the subtle, and then not so subtle hints started. “When are we going to make cookies?” I noticed they conveniently left out the “Christmas” qualifier, but I knew what they meant.

In small ways, the kids are ready to start living again. This is a good thing, a great thing even. I should be thrilled that they’re finding their way. I am. I really am. Even more remarkable is that this seems to be one of the first times, all three of them are on the same page: not quite ready to run back to our old traditions, but eager to start making small steps toward new ones.

For most things, I take my cue from them and support the direction they’re moving in, but this one is different. I didn’t love holidays before Steve. Most of the time they just created a lot of stress, unmet expectations, and family arguments. Steve, however, loved the holidays.

We’d spent our first few Christmases as a couple just enjoying the time off work and visiting family members. Then our first few Christmases with the kids, we did try to visit family and “make the rounds,” but the year G arrived just a few weeks before Christmas and after a trying two weeks in the hospital, made it home just four days before Christmas, we started a new tradition.

We stayed home, in our pajamas, and let A enjoy opening presents as he wished, with long pauses between them to examine his new toys and books.

So began our holiday tradition that continued right up until our very last one together. I’d make a ham, and a few Crock-Pots of food that didn’t need tending all day. An overnight breakfast casserole that baked while the kids opened their presents, and then they ate when they felt like it all day long. It was a lazy day of play and relaxation, and we looked forward to it every year.

As the day would end, and the house would start to get dark, the kids would finally get sick of all our quality time, and Steve and I would usually have some quiet minutes to sit and admire the tree, which was undoubtedly the best tree we’d ever had, until next year’s tree.

No matter how many chores awaited us the next day, we made zero effort to do anything about them. Christmas was our day to just enjoy being together.

Somehow, knowing that Christmas will never again have that level of comfort and peace makes me want to continue to avoid it entirely.

It just seems like the emptiness that is with us all the time would just be magnified to an unbearable level. But, for the kids’ sakes, I decided that I would go along with their seemingly small requests.

I found myself rolling out pie crusts, bathed in the glow of the lighted garland we decided to hang on the staircase, with a fire blazing away in the wood stove.

It was such a familiar feeling that I found myself sure I would hear Steve and the boys burst through the door from a day spent hunting any moment. It broke my heart completely.

Pie crust doesn’t stay chilled for long, especially with the wood stove going, so I sucked it up, got the pies in the oven, and then sat down for a good cry while they baked. It just doesn’t make sense how something can feel so familiar and yet be so foreign.

At the same time, I can see that the kids are enjoying it. I’ve caught E playing with the snowman collection that now decorates the window seat in the breakfast room.

A and G have both been lighting the “baked goods” candles that I liked to use during the holidays, to accompany the trays and trays of cookies I used to bake. I’ve found all of them wrapped up in blankets, watching Christmas movies.

Even though half of the house is still torn apart because of our ongoing renovation project that went from taking a few weeks to almost having its first anniversary, the part of our house that is finished, has taken on a warm, holiday glow.

No one has had the guts to put the Christmas carol play list on yet, but I feel like someone will soon. Steve and the kids delighted in finding new and unusual funny Christmas songs to play. The 12 Pains of Christmas, The Rusty Chevrolet, and The Season’s Upon Us by the Dropkick Murphys were favorites that we all knew the words to and would all sing together.

I know we have to find a new path forward, and I’m grateful that the kids seem to know how to start navigating it, but I’m still just in this limbo where it doesn’t seem like the right thing or the wrong thing, it’s just one more thing to be gotten through.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing columnist who appears weekly in the Times News.