Home for the Holidays

We are practicing setting boundaries these days, me and Dr. Husband. Learning how to set reasonable limits, how to make sure we get enough personal time to keep us from going insane, how to encourage those in our care to play independently from time to time. We are practicing these concepts not on the baby, who is still too young and wobbly to learn such things but on our not-too-young and not-too-wobbly parents and siblings who are suddenly quite interested in visiting us regularly and eating all our snacks.

The therapist I started seeing a few months back, largely in anticipation of the post-partum depression that has not yet descended upon me (fingers crossed! naps taken! depleted vitamin D reserves assisted with supplements!), she suggests taking a hard-line approach to parental visits. Tell them what you need from them, and don’t make it optional, is the gist.

But how do you tell people whose idea of a “visit” is a solid week of staying in your house and never venturing outside that your idea of a “visit” is a weekend of them staying at a hotel and meeting up each day for an afternoon adventure and dinner out? It seems about as possible as a team of flying reindeer carrying a man in a sleigh filled with gifts for all the children in the entire world.

It’s not that I don’t like spending time with my family—I really do—it’s just that I need it to come in small doses, like sun exposure or flourless chocolate cake. When I graduated from college I moved from a campus 1,000 away from my mom and dad to a city three hours away so that each visit wouldn’t be such a big deal. Big Deal visits are sure to disappoint—and to grate on the nerves after an hour or two.

But now I live nearly 2,000 miles away from my parents, and nearly 1,000 away from Dr. Husband’s, and we have just supplied them with their first grandchild, and every single visit is sure to be a Very Big Deal.

How to cope?

Jack Daniels works pretty well, it turns out, but I would have a hard time justifying the consumption of whisky at 9 in the morning without a medical reason and a doctor (husband’s) orders.

The woman I was in a relationship with back when I lived in a city three hours away from my parents’ house—and three hours away from hers—used to refer to the phenomenon of going to visit family and having everyone hang out in the living room all day making chitchat as “having the sit-arounds,” a diagnosis that always makes me think of having the runs or the bends.


Dear Santa,

All I want for Christmas is to not come down with a case of the sit-arounds.

Love,
Me


p.s. Please tell my parents and brother that this gift is not optional.