DATELINE: St. Louis

Not much to report. The true madness has yet to begin.

I felt much better yesterday than I had been expecting, considering I was home sick all day Wednesday. I slept most of the time, which was a wise choice, though it may have something to do with why I couldn't sleep at bedtime. Or maybe that was just pre-trip stress. I love visiting; it's the travel I can't stand.

My sister met me, son in arms. I didn't feel up to shopping, so we got a little baking done and brought each other up to date on potential personality conflicts for the days ahead. Mom, in particular, seems to be hauling the most baggage to town (literally and figuratively). It came out last weekend that she thinks my sister is hosting everything only because Mom doesn't yet have a house in town and her sense of matriachy is injured. She feels she should be feeding, housing, and entertaining everyone. sigh Now I need to look for opportunities to shore up her sense of self-worth while tactfully keeping her more extravagant notions for the Christmas party she's hosting tomorrow in check, lest we all lose it. My sister introduced one of her reports yesterday by saying, "This is Mom being insane." I think that will be a common refrain today and tomorrow.

Must dash. Time to unload Mom's car and discover the bushels of half-completed projects she thought would each add a little something special to our celebrations--which I'm still looking forward to, mind you.

Xmas Stress Update 1

I had hoped to make it at least until tomorrow without losing it. Oh, well.

Everything was basically fine until lunch. We had returned hungry from shopping and were trying to put the meal together. I asked Mom what I could do that afternoon to help her prepare for the family gathering tomorrow and she told me everything was under control, there was only one detail she was worried about: Who would play Santa for the little children?

Fortunately, my sister had warned me she would do this and I immediately answered "No". My younger brother had turned her down, too, and she wasn't comfortable asking my older brother. My sister said Mom could ask my brother-in-law if she wanted, but the answer would most likely be "no" there, too. We jokingly suggested my gay cousin’s boyfriend as a candidate.

Mom said she hoped to find someone among the cousins "since my own family has disappointed me." I asked why she was so set on having one of her children play Santa and she replied, "Because we're hosting." That's when I lost it. I said, "There's no tradition of having the hosting family play Santa! What difference does it make?" My younger brother had made the point that we’ll have a hundred other things to deal with and we don’t want to be tied up in a costume with squealers on our laps, but I wasn’t that coherent. I stormed off, lest I go on and on about her uncanny ability to fixate on unimportant details. This was excused me because "he's tired, he's not feeling well", so we were spared dealing with the reality: That I don’t approve of Mom’s approach to entertaining.

The basic problem is that she’s always trying to compete with her suburban sisters, who tend to be wealthier, extroverted, and get much more practice. She’s gotten better over the years at scaling down her plans to what she can actually pull off successfully, but there are always sticking points. Two years ago, when Christmas was at her house, my friend e. discovered her husband and me twining pine rope around the banister near the midnight hour. “Why are you doing that now?” she asked. “Because Mom wanted it,” I replied. That was the holiday in a nutshell.

After lunch, Mom left to do more shopping and I slept for two hours. I don't really feel much better, just less sleepy. But I don’t really feel any worse and the end is in sight. Thanks for all the well-wishing and let nothing you dismay.