Michelle Kaplan

Home for the Holidays

December and January are nothing if not synonymous with the Holidays. Whether it’s Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, or if you chose to side with George Costanza father, Frank, and celebrate Festivus, a holiday for the rest of us, get out the aluminum pole, Christmas tree, menorah, kinara candles and meet me in the next paragraph.

Yes, the holidays, which over the last 30 years or so, have come to resemble nothing like out of a Norman Rockwell picture. Forget the fact that Black Friday, television commercials, Tickle Me Till I Wet My Pants Elmo and Heelys have taken over peace, love, joy and that fuzzy warm holiday feeling. That’s nothing compared to dealing with the
Family – that is the family of today. Thirty years ago, you may have had to sit around the table with your family. A gathering of uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, your parents and your siblings. Of course there was the odd cousin, eccentric aunt or someone you had to kinda deal with. Later, progressing to a family of your own you added on a spouse and children that added to the mix. Ten or so years later, meet the Ex’s, the Ex’s new girlfriend, boyfriend, their kids, their parents, their aunts, uncles and cousins. And you thought it was complicated back then? If there was ever the need for some direction of protocol when it comes to whom you have to invite, not invite listen to, or put up with on a holiday, this is it. Does Ann Landers even venture to go there?
Because I just need to know what do you do when you’re boyfriend’s ex-wife calls during a holiday dinner to ask what kind of glue to use on her drooping wall border, or what temperature to set the thermostat on because he used to handle that. I mean, how could she be expected to know what temperature she feels most comfortable at, let alone how to actually maneuver the thermostat to get it there?

I mean is it ok, or would I be overstepping my bounds to grab the phone and ask them to consult a therapist? What do you do when you come home for the holidays and your husband’s ex-wife is sitting in the driveway because she needs to borrow her daughter’s cell phone, and hey, she didn’t call first because she has no boundaries. Just where do you draw the line when your husband’s daughter is piling the holiday dinner that you made onto a platter to take out to her mom without asking? Do you stick out your foot out and trip her, or do you hope that her mother chokes on the wishbone? Or do you graciously remember that it’s the HOLIDAYS, and let it go?

Dear Ann Landers,
It’s another holiday and my ex-husband all of a sudden has decided that he wants the kids. Even though I’ve made plans, and he has never taken them on a holiday and according to the divorce agreement it is MY year to have the kids. Do I let him take the kids to sit in his house alone with him? To watch him burn his first turkey, or do I insist on taking them because it is MY year and I’ll be taking them to my cousins house to be with 22 of their relatives, including their 96-year-old great grandmother, where they will be spending their first holiday with my boyfriend, his kids, his father and his father’s wife.

These are the kind of questions I wonder about. This is what’s really going on out there. Yet you’re made to feel that you should be on an episode of Jerry Springer, because how weird does this get? Which leads me to this very bizarre dream I had the other night, and if I were Freud, I would guess it was because the holidays were fast approaching. There we were, celebrating the non-denominational Festivus, gathered around the aluminum pole, ready to do the traditional “Airing of Grievances,” everyone was happy, although I was a little nervous, we were on big family. Me, my boyfriend, my kids, his kids, my ex, his ex, her boyfriend, his kids, Santa, Santa’s ex-wife, my ex in laws, Donald Rumsfeld, (I said it was a dream), Elizabeth Taylor and all of her ex’s.

Leaning in, I ask Liz; I can’t imagine what it is like for YOU at the holidays. She just smiled and said, “Darling, like on big happy family,” then she paused took a sip of her martini and strangely turned into Borat and laughed, “NOT!”