What Would Jesus Do?

"Santa Claus has the right idea.. Visit people once a year." ~ Victor Borge (Danish Comedian, Conductor, Pianist)

I am adopted...secretly. It is the only answer I can muster that might explain my presence in a family that is so totally different than myself. I must have been adopted and no one told me. I wish they would tell me so that this theory could transition from wishful thinking into my reality. I have plenty of evidence to discount this theory, such as pictures of my mother and father and sister in the hospital with me on the day I was born. I look brand new and my mother looks like shit after allegedly giving birth me....hmmmm, pretty strong evidence to the contrary of my theory. Oh well....I'll keep fantasizing. And really....not being adopted allows me to think to myself, WOW, I turned out so well considering the circumstances. That's a happy, self esteem boosting thought.

I think I should point out that most family hilarity that I might write about on my blog EXCLUDES my dear, darling father who is, if nothing else, normal and kind. How he has managed to survive the regime he has been living under for over 40 years is beyond me....and no, the answer is not the excessive consumption of alcohol. My mother declared him an alcoholic many years back, taking away the one thing he might have been able to successfully use to cope. It helps me, I know that for sure. I don't think my father was an alcoholic, I just think he did not handle his liquor very well and was prone to drinking too much of it on occasion. Show me someone who doesn't do that! I've been known to stumble down a stair or two (or a flight of stairs, depending on how well my evening has gone). Regardless, I give him props for using what was available to him at the time to help him survive and if he started drinking again tomorrow, I'd stand and applaud him.

This holiday season was the exact replica of the one before that. Oh - and the one before that. Actually, there is a long succession of sucky holiday seasons that are firmly rooted in my memory and each and every time I have had the occasion to even consider - for a moment - moving back to my province, they have served me well in snapping me concretely back into reality. A sharp 'fuck that' and 'what the fuck were you thinking, even if only for 2.4 seconds' clearly reverberates through my consciousness. This year the major, overarching theme was: complaining. My mother complaining about my sister; my sister complaining about my mother, her husband, her life - well, basically everything. This season, I took a vastly different approach in the management of this considerable negative energy...but, don't worry, I didn't switch it up too much - there was still the over consumption of many a bottle of wonderful wine. I disengaged. I did not respond. I pretended to listen while giving a nod or a hmmm once in awhile when really I was thinking about my upcoming trip to Africa, world poverty, my next massage appointment, or many other more interesting topics. And I will say, it worked! Once in awhile, I inserted a snappy comeback to their constant meanderings about how much their lives suck, such as, I wonder what Jesus would do? Apparently, I was the only one entertained by this but, really...it was all about me and survival at that point and if I could provide myself with some tidbits of entertainment...I was all over that.

I hope everyone had a holly, jolly drunken Christmas and that you too found ways to entertain yourself while enduring the obligatory family time. Happy New Year!