My Christmas Epiphany

Every year, the holidays seem to bring at least one unwanted gift. I’ve had a set of garish plastic dishes that were too big to fit in my kitchen cabinets; I regularly receive “girlie” gifts of compacts and pretty beaded pins from an aunt who has clearly never noticed that the daughter she never had grew up to be a no-frills pragmatist; I get a wine bottle opener and a set of glasses from someone every year without fail. Fortunately, I break glasses often and need replacements, but I’m good for openers for a while.

This Christmas, though, I got a gift I really didn’t want. It didn’t come wrapped in pretty shiny paper; it wasn’t left under the tree for me to find on Christmas morning. It was delivered to me on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) as a full-blown slap in the face. It was the gift of realization that my beloved family is flawed.

I always thought of the Dysfunctional Family as being a purely American invention, designed originally to generate sit-com humor and later adopted into the lifestyles of those people to whom drama seems to gravitate. I’ve listened often with furrowed brow to other people’s tales of siblings who haven’t spoken for years, mothers who pry into the most personal details of their children’s lives, and in-laws who just can’t seem to get along. I would shake my head and wonder why other people’s families just couldn’t be as perfect as mine.

My mother has never stuck her nose into my personal business and made helpful suggestions as to how I ought to conduct my life. She was always there in the unlikely event I actually came seeking advice; otherwise she just let me make my own mistakes, knowing I would come out the wiser for it in the end. I have two older brothers, both very different, but each with their own set of positive attributes—generosity, humor, and intelligence. They both married women who at first appeared to be completely wrong for them, but who have proven over 20-year marriages to be ideal mates. Between them they have produced eight nieces and nephews for me to spend my hard earned cash on. It’s the perfect extended family unit--except that my sisters-in-law despise one another. No one in the family can actually remember, or maybe ever knew what happened, if anything, between these two women to cause such vehement dislike for one another, but their jealously and stubbornness has slowly worn a deep rift between my two brothers, left cousins who rarely see one another and frequently puts my mother and me on the defense of one side or the other. It also means that, assuming there have been no weddings or funerals that year, we get together as a family once every 12-18 months on my return visits home.

This year, my eldest brother had been the one to suggest we get together on New Year’s Eve. I thought at first it was a sign that he had finally decided it was time to let bygones be bygones.
“No,” he said, when I hinted at this, “I just thought you’d want us to see us all together.”

I did. I wanted us to sit around the table and chat and laugh like the loving family we were. There’d be jokes and funny stories of our childhood shenanigans. My sisters-in-law would fight, of course, but it would be over who would wash the dishes and who would dry and put them away while my mother warmed her toes by the fire. There would be games of Mille Bornes or Monopoly with the adults and older children, and Ludo and Hungry Hippos for the little ones. With the warm farewells there would be hugs and pledges to “do this more often” and my sister-in-law would promise to send the other her fabulous trifle recipe the second she stepped in the door.

That was what I wanted, but judging by the reactions of each couple to the invitation, I knew it wouldn’t be what I’d get. Instead, there were four hours of strained politeness, shallow chitchat restricted to safe topics. My nieces and nephews had clearly all been told to be on their best behavior under pain of death, so instead of the usual pack of wild but amusing savages, we had a bunch of sullen mutes each plugged into their own iPod, Portable DVD player, book, or combination thereof. My sisters-in-law took turns in the kitchen being ever so helpful (which they were) but each securing some one-on-one time with my mother and me so as not to risk being outdone by the other. I exchanged a dozen or so words of small talk with each of my brothers, who in turn exchanged about two with each other. I have no idea how my brothers are doing; if they’re healthy, if their jobs are going well, if they’re content with the current political state of affairs or if they think their country is going to the dogs. I did, however learn the five-day weather forecast and the pros and cons of all the routes from Shrewsbury to Sheffield.

I had wanted us all to just get along—and we did.
It was awful.

I realize that by Dysfunctional Family standards, mine is pretty tame, but as the baby of the family it’s a sad revelation to realize the older siblings you once emulated are not the role-models you thought and that, in fact you have become the sensible, mature voice of reason.

I am toying with two possible options for next year’s holidays. The first is to set up a boxing ring on my mother’s back lawn, tell each of the brothers and sisters-in-law everything the others had ever told me and let them go at it. Instead of spending days shopping, cleaning and preparing a gourmet meal, my mother and I would have beer and hot dogs ringside and watch them scrap it out. The second option is to retreat with my husband to a mountain inn or a remote tropical island where I can lay on the beach and think warm fuzzy thoughts about the perfect family I was naive enough to think I had.