featurepics-539AA725-44FD-432E-A6FB-FDE4EE828D1DI have a *friend* who, although she loves her family dearly, finds her stomach tightening and her left eye twitching when holidays and family gatherings approach. Perhaps it’s the added pressure of having to dust all those high shelves and wipe those fingerprints off of the walls (and cabinets and doors and chairs and floors). Perhaps it’s because even when she does clean the house until it’s spotless and she puts fresh towels on her mother’s bed and mints on the pillow, her mother will invariably mention that the guest bathroom has no soap or that there’s a shortage of cheese in the fridge (don’t ask). Perhaps it’s the thought of having to *entertain* family members in the dead of winter, after the actual holiday is over, when there’s nothing to do except shop at T.J. Maxx and watch football. Or perhaps it’s the knowledge that when family comes to town, there will inevitably be some tension. Unresolved issues. Elephants in the room, taking up all the chairs. And this *friend* will often have to bite her tongue as she slips into the age-old roles of daughter, sister, daughter-in-law (now that one’s a doozy), trying to balance these roles with her current ones as wife and matriarch, finding herself mother and child at once.

As a young married woman, this friend and her husband alternated between his home and hers for the holidays. She found her in-laws’ customs to be foreign and strange—really, who serves creamed spinach as a Thanksgiving dinner side dish? And why did her mother-in-law so obviously dislike her? Holidays with the in-laws left her feeling homesick and unmoored, but when she visited home she still felt out of place; she was a grown up now, with a husband (!), so different from her childhood self. Her husband complained he was cold, with the thermostat set at 62 degrees instead of the 74 he was used to. And her parents hardly spoke to each other anymore and her baby sisters were no longer little girls.

Several years later, after my friend and her husband had a couple of children of their own and her parents divorced, she started hosting holidays at her house, making the transition from daughter to mother. But how nervous she was the first time she roasted a turkey with her mother-in-law in the house! Who did she think she was, pretending to be a grown up woman? And how capricious that bird, taking four hours to roast in the cooking bag instead of two and a half. Now, however, after years of practice my friend turns out a pretty decent Thanksgiving dinner (so she tells me), especially since she discovered the secret of brining the turkey. And when, aproned and smiling, she carries the platter of melt-in-your-mouth turkey to the lace-covered table and places it before her hungry, admiring audience, she feels like a woman in her own right. The matriarch.

Unless one of her parents is visiting, in which case she feels like a fourteen-year-old girl again. Chalk it up to the age-old need to please and seemingly-set-in-stone family dynamics. One visit from her family and my friend reverts to the dependable, boorish eldest child. The example setter. Bossy Boots, as her siblings used to call her. She is the daughter who is serious and straight-laced, a little too churchy, who can’t help but feel that she isn’t as fun or funny as her younger sister—who is the family entertainer and comedian, the life of the party, and (my friend secretly believes) her mother’s favorite. Her sister, on the other hand, believes my friend is her father’s favorite, but my friend knows her father doesn’t have favorites—except maybe their brother, who is the only boy.

Suffice it to say, then, that my friend knows family gatherings on holidays can be tricky. Because families are complicated and messy and sometimes dysfunctional, though we love them to death. Add in stepparents, a couple of in-laws, some buried resentments and unaired grievances, and you’ve got yourself a party. My friend can hardly wait. And I’ve assured her that the twitch is barely noticeable.

Do you find family get togethers during the holidays stressful? What helps you cope? Do you slip into childhood roles when your family visits and if so, what role do you play? Do you take turns visiting your family/in-laws for Thanksgiving or do you host? And if you host Thanksgiving, who comes to your house and do you enjoy entertaining? And finally, do you brine the turkey?

Related posts:

  1. Family Affair
  2. Proper Care and Feeding of Turkeys
  3. Mother-in-law


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