Home for the Holidays: Putting the “oy” in “joy”
Posted By Hinda Mandell on December 28, 2009
Home for the holidays.
A phrase so simple, so idyllic and so normal.
A phrase that so completely manages to bypass the family neurosis that comes with it.
A quick Google News search of “family stress” reveals 9,769 hits. (As a point of comparison, fruitcake nets a mere 1,155 and eggnog scores 3,144.)
Newsday’s article on coping with family stress offers a few oh-so-helpful hints. Consider, “be a grownup.”
I’ll tell that to my mom. And perhaps I could have avoided this situation:
The scene: my best friend’s house.
Present: Me, my best friend, my best friend’s mother.
My mom picks me up from a visit with my best friend and stops in for some tea. (Quaint, right?)
My best friend’s mother, a neurologist, talks about taking a medical board exam in sleep medicine.
“Maybe you can talk to my husband,” my mom says. “He sleeps on his back and I tell him, ‘Fred, why do you sleep on your back?’ The sounds he makes, they’re not even snores. They’re puffs. So every night I have to roll him onto his side because I’m telling you I can’t take it anymore. It’s unseemly.”
I try to shove cake into my mom’s mouth to distract her.
“So should he see a sleep specialist?” my mom asks, cake crumbs sputtering from her mouth. “Because it’s the puffs I can’t take. It’s like a whole orchestra at 3 in the morning. And all I want is to get some sleep.”
Happy neurosis holidays. Putting the oy back in joy.
My best friend turns to me and remarks that now she understands why it’s so utterly impossible to embarrass me. My mother, bless her, has completely inoculated me from feeling embarrassed.
I’m immune.
I guess that’s why I go home for the holidays. At 29, I still need my yearly booster shots against possible embarrassmentitis.
Hilarious booster shots. I’m surprised by the search results though. You must have SafeSearch turned on, you prude! (Kidding. Speaking of which, have you seen the proposed new “sarcasm” punctuation mark? I think it defeats the purpose of sarcasm, as does “Kidding,” I suppose, what are a journalist’s thoughts?)