Tis the Season
2006-12-13 @ 4:40 p.m.

Decorating my house for the season is always a pleasure. I decorated last Friday night. I got home from work, took a nap and then had dinner. I made some tea and broke out the decorations. I use a lot of live greens, candles and this year, I purchased a number of large poinsettias, placing them strategically around the fireplace. As I decorated, I watched White Christmas. Sappy? You bet.

This year, I'm feeling caught in an unintentional tug-of-war. It has become quite stressful at times.

Like many of you, this time of year brings many invitations. It's impossible to accept them all. There's scheduling conflicts of course, and you have to leave a few nights for 'me' time and the guilty pleasure of those Rankin/Bass Christmas specials. Today you can get them all on DVD, which completely ruins everything. I can remember being six or seven or eight and waiting for that special night when Rudolph or Santa Clause is Coming to Town would be shown. Shown once. I digress. Back to the stress.

Both Steve and Chris have bombarded me with invitations to family parties, work parties and friend's parties. I feel torn and stressed. I've accepted some, most actually, but not all. I know they don't mean to stress me out but I'm getting pulled left and right: "Come with me to this....Come with me to that...Are you free on Thursday...Should I get tickets for..." I'm doing my best but give the girl a break.

I usually spend Christmas Eve with Steve's family. That's their big night. It's always fun. His parents, brothers and sisters really dote on me. They consider me family and treat me as such. And sense I've been around longer than some of his sibling's significant others (including longer than a husband and two wives), I've achieved an ambiguous kind of seniority status despite the naked ring finger. Christmas Day is spent with Steve and my family. Since our families live close by, we sometimes do a pop-in on both families. Perhaps an hour or two with mine on Christmas Eve before we go to his house and an hour or two with his on Christmas Day before we go to mine. You get the picture.

Chris has invited me to a family get-together on the Friday before Christmas. At first, the invite was to meet his parents. This will be for the first time. I said yes because he really wanted me to meet them and because it's something I wanted to do for him. Then I find out that it's a family get-together, complete with brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles. Yeah! Merry Christmas!

I don't know about you, but meeting the parents is traumatic enough without facing the entire family at once, even with a blindfold and cigarette. For a girl, meeting Mom is, in baseball parlance, "going to the show." I've never received any bad vibes from Dads. They're pretty easy on their son's girlfriends. The mothers? That's a different animal. My theory is that for Moms, no girl is good enough for her boy. As for Dads, they seem to think their son isn't good enough for any girl.

I always feel, with few exceptions, like I'm being sized-up, inspected and thoroughly evaluated by Mom. No one has inspected my teeth yet, but sometimes it has felt they were damn close to doing so. And you're not being critiqued as girlfriend material. No, that would be too easy. I feel like I'm auditioning for the role of wife and future mother of her grandchildren (and they always seem to want a lot of those). And I don't have very good hips for breeding!

Is any girl good enough for his mother? On the other hand, like I mentioned, fathers can be pretty cool. For instance, Steve's dad is always quick to tease him about my being "completely out of his league." Yes, he's a sweetie.

So, meeting Mom is almost always a tricky minefield. It's the relationship equivalent of a police interrogation. I'm free to leave or ask for an attorney, but then I might not get as good a plea deal.

Meeting the entire family at once? That's the relationship equivalent of landing on Omaha Beach.

I hope your Holiday Season is going well. Be safe. Be happy. Good luck. I'll see you on the beach.