Beren deMotier * writer * artist * human  

"No More Mrs. Nice Gay"                                        December 8, 2005 

Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly (and Barbed Wire) 

            Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries – long the mantra of the self-help generation, it has become my battle cry this year since mid-November.  We not only decked the halls with boughs of holly, we’re adding barbed wire for good measure.

            Only figuratively of course – my fourteen year old would use it to create medieval-style weapons, the two year old would repeatedly injure himself in an effort to scale it like a baby gate (he considers any restraining device a challenge), and our ten year old might find it so appealing she’d go Goth.  And after all, it’s not there to police our nuclear family; me, my wife, and our three kids are cool, and generally not at war with one another.

            It’s the relatives we want to keep at bay during the holiday season. 

It’s not like “boundaries” are a new concept for us.  We’ve long had a dry, non-smoking house, and that took some firm boundaries during our early years together, until those relatives unhappy with our policy drank themselves to death. 

But creating a blockade against loved ones in the name of self-preservation where there is no clear act one can point to and say, “There, that’s why I go crazy every time this person is near!” is tough. 

I could pretend that we continually renegotiate which relatives we need to keep at bay, but it really comes down to my side of the family, because after an initial decade of going to my wife’s folks’ for Christmas, we get to spend the rest of our Christmas mornings at our house, for all eternity, and that’s about all the negotiating we need to do.

            My family of origin has been especially difficult during the holidays for the last couple of years, and when our middle-schooler, in his adolescent candor, described me as tense, shrill, and no fun for the month of December, I knew that things had to change.

            It’s sad, because I truly love the holiday season.  I am that rare breed of person who enjoys shopping for gifts, because it gives me an opportunity to think about the people in our lives; what they’re like, what they like, what makes them tick.  I like to decorate festively, drink eggnog lattes, and will hum along happily to rendition after rendition of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. 

And unlike stories you hear about modern children and their materialistic ways, the Christmas season brings out the best in our kids.  They are into the rituals: the lights, the baking, the cards we print at the kitchen table, the trips to visit out-of-town grandparents and cousins, cutting down the tree with a blunt saw while a Texas Longhorn and a Brahma Bull look on in benign interest.  So my moody brittleness has nothing to do with them, and everything to do with the outside forces that seem to wreak havoc on our peace.

            It is in my nature to want to be nice, to take the high road, and do the right thing.  I want to invite family in, to forgive and forget (though some might argue with this statement to the death), but I am also as thin-skinned as a naked mole rat, and just as ugly in my vulnerability to criticism and imagined shifts of allegiance. 

            Clearly, six years of therapy were not enough.

            Our kids are fairly oblivious to my ghosts of Christmas past; we’ve done our best to shield them from trauma-drama, they only recently noticed the correlation between “approaching family occasions” and “Ber-Ber’s near hysteria”, and they’ve never seen anyone drink their breakfast on a Christmas morning (something my sister and I resorted to ourselves one year in a spirit of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”).

            Last year, still reeling from the prior holiday season, I tried to bow out gracefully from family activities, and set up some initial fencing.  My wife gently but steadily encouraged me toward self-preservation.  But I caved, and optimistically attempted to cross the rickety bridge spanning our familial chasms.  The bridge blew up all over me, our Christmas, our anniversary the next day, and left me spending the rest of the month lying on the couch with a box of tissues, and a stocking full of Christmas candy, wishing valium was available without a prescription.

            This year my wife and I agreed to draw a line in the sand and stick to it.  I survived that, and began to relax into the idea of enjoying the season, instead of tensing for the next blow (though as the adult child of an alcoholic, I never let my guard down completely).

            I know, I know, six years of therapy was not enough…

            But barbed wire is not all bad.  It’s covered with garland and colored lights, and we happily invite friends into our sanctum sanctorum; a place where handmade miniature Christmas trees line every horizontal surface, and the I-Pod plays Burl Ives.  And relatives can come too, as long as they throw down their arms, banish the ghosts, and come in peace.

Photos by Jannine Setter