The Good, The Bad, & The Holidays

Well, another Christmas has come and gone and, despite my high hopes and lowered expectations, this Christmas turned out alarmingly similar to last Christmas...and the Christmas before that...and the Christmas before that. Sort of a cross between National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and The Exorcist.

I live in Louisiana, but the majority of my family, including my parents, live in Dallas, Texas. So, more often than not, when the Holidays arrive, I find myself wrestling with the guilt of having not seen my parents since the prior Holiday Season. And, more often than not, I wind up dragging my wife with me to my parents' home in Dallas.

And...more often than not...we wind up regretting the decision. You see, I really enjoy spending time with my baby sister and my younger brother (my older sister lives on the East Coast and has the good sense to stay there for the Holidays), and I really enjoy spending time with my Dad. However...

...my Mother is another story. I love my Mother, don't get me wrong. But I really have grown to dislike being around her. My childhood memories of my Mother are of her storming around the house, brow furrowed, scowl on her face, cigarette pinched between her fingers, yelling at whoever happened to be within earshot. She was always pissed off about something or at someone. Unfortunately for my Dad, it was usually him.

Now that she has gotten older, instead of being pissed off all the time, she is "in pain" or sad because my Dad's job keeps him out of town, or sad because her grand-kids are out of town, or angry at my baby sister and/or her boyfriend, or...you get the point. My mother craves the experience of people patting her on the shoulder and saying, "Poor thing. Is there anything I can do?"

So...anyway...that brings us to Christmas '08. The first day was good. Mom was in a fair mood, apparently happy to see the wife and me. We had a nice time that day. But, by the second day, the scowl had returned to her face, she was groaning with every move she made and she was bad-mouthing my baby sister, baby sister's boyfriend and my grandmother...??... Wow.

The day after Christmas was even worse and the day after that was the "last straw". That morning, when I woke up and stepped out of the guest bedroom into the hallway, the first sound I heard was dear-old-Mom calling my Dad, who had just gotten home a few hours earlier and was trying to get some much-needed sleep, a "son-of-a-bitch" because he wouldn't take her dog into the backyard. Her dog. The dog she bought to keep her company while my Dad traveled for work and she sat in her recliner watching TV for days on end. Sorry, I seem to be having some sort of flashback. Moving on...

Moments after hearing what Mom said, the wife and I packed our bags and fled the scene, swearing to ourselves that. "We won't do that again!" But, when the summer of 2009 finally fades into autumn and the Holiday Season rears its ugly head yet again, something tells me I'll find myself in yet another wrestling match...