Wellll, since coming out to my aunt (with hilarious/disastrous consequences), Christmases have been relatively free of 'are you still too busy to see girls?' interrogation. There's still tenseness, however, related to my mother's apparent drive to a) control Christmas, and b) have her children perform.
The first manifests itself in my mother's Monica-from-Friends tendency to micro-manage every single aspect of the day, dispensing Fun in discretely-packaged units, to be consumed and photographed as she dictates. At the thin end of the wedge, this means her insisting that no presents can be opened until the Now That's What I Call Christmas album is on; further along the wedge, she's been known to label Christmas presents and produce word-processed agendas ("you can open Present No.1 now"). Woe betide anyone who attempts to stray from the pre-planned Agenda of Fun: offences include failing to smile for the camera and refusing to wear one's cracker-hat.
When one of my sisters spawned, I breathed a sigh of relief - and it's true that the pressure was off me (and my other sister) for a while. Unfortunately, my mother now feels the need to direct every family occasion, with prompts to "look at the baby" every thirty seconds or so, so no-one misses the fact that the baby's still smiling, or breathing regularly, or wearing clothes.
My mother's second major hair-tearing flaw (and stop me if I'm screaming 'issues' here) is her inclination to provoke performance - ideally competitive performance - in her children. These days, we're old enough and wise enough to steer clear of the competitive aspect, but the 'say/do something funny' stuff still grates. Me being a psychiatrist, it's now 'tell us a funny story about your patients'. I have a wealth of witty, laugh-a-minute anecdotes on the theme of psychiatric suffering and, unprompted, I might relate them; when pressed, however, I regress to Kevin The Teenager surliness, and point-blank refuse to play ball.
And, naturally, there's the usual pushing of Guilt buttons. If I agree to spend New Year with my mother, I get the whole 'couldn't you come up for Christmas too, and fly back to London for the week in-between' line. It's ne-e-ever gonna be enough.
Gah. |
