The flip side of the family coin...

No sooner did everything blow up than everything went back to normal again. It's very weird.

I was sitting around fuming and planning my revenge (as triple scorpios will tend to do), and my mother came up and did that thing only mothers can do and coaxed me from my fury.

And without a word, my sister and father dropped the whole subject and acted like nothing had ever happened. I think this is something that can only ever happen in a family.

On the one hand, this is a good thing, and we enjoyed the rest of our holidays. On the other hand, there's something inherently disingenuous and incomplete about the whole thing. Nothing has changed. We have not learned anything from one another. We haven't resolved anything. I have no faith that things will be any different the next time. The pattern is still the pattern.

I very much enjoyed the hospitality and generosity of my sister, brother-in-law who we stayed with, and also my brother and sister-in-law who served us a glorious Thanksgiving-like dinner one night. It was a far more relaxed Christmas than we have had in the past and took a lot of pressure off my mom, which was all good. But I still wonder if I'll ever come back for another Christmas without some additional reinforcement in the form of Wilbert. It is certainly nowhere near as fun without him! And that's something the whole family can agree on.