Happy Holidays

You know, it's just not the holidays until at least two of your relatives - on separate occasions - run sobbing from the room, crying, "Forget it! Christmas is cancelled! Christmas is cancelled!

And what could be warmer or fuzzier than seeing your gentle elderly father, who is practically deaf and has slowed down so much he practically moves and thinks as if he is underwater - and has started to lose touch with reality and become increasingly paranoid - come up the stairs in the dark, smiling kindly, and carrying a huge hunting knife in a peculiar way that makes you think, "why don't I just take that from you and put it somewhere 'safe'?"

Oh and don't forget the hysterics from your narcissistic mother - who would go hysterical if she read this - and the constant nagging nagging nagging, and the open hostility towards her partner of 50 years, my dad, who as forementioned, has finally detached his shuttle from the mothership and is floating away somewhere towards Neptune. And the distant bemused laughter of my father, watching as all the activity happens around him, as if we were the crazy ones.

And what would the holidays be without the Negativity. No, not the Nativity. The oppressive and frustrating constant negativity, the blocking of every new idea, new thought, any thought at all, with a constant angry and indignant, "No." As if I was the crazy one. Oh and let's not forget the clutching grasping neediness and self-pity. And complete and total lack of perspective, as in when a canvasser for Mothers Against Drunk Drivers comes to the door and my sometimes dear, sometimes crazy mother tells him that if he knew her situation, he would give HER a dollar. Yes, that's right, mother, because it is far better to lose one of your children to a drunk driver than it is to sell your house to pay for debts that you incurred yourself through willful blindness. I see. And God bless us, Everyone.

And yet there are good moments too. It's not all utter horror. And I do love them. I do. All it proves is that children aren't meant to live with their parents. It's a survival instinct. Otherwise the fledglings would never leave the nest. And without a "spouse buffer" or an enormous amount of money that would allow me to stay in a hotel and just visit a few hours a day, I am constrained to board with the folks, which is just not a natural arrangement. I'm sure I'm no picnic sometimes either. I'm Switzerland, gritting my teeth and trying to see both sides without taking any sides and mostly gazing into my plate and pretending it's not happening. I could develop more of a backbone. But that seems like so much more effort than just floating away to my happy place. Nonetheless -

Happy holidays! and

Love to whole wicked world,

N.