Keeping it G-Real This Christmas

Keeping it G-Real this Christmas!!!

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth!  Really?  I mean, wouldn’t you at least ask for a full set of molars?  I judge and make bad jokes.  It is just that Christmas, and all that it stands for, is now behind us and I suppose we have to ask ourselves: did we get what we wanted for Christmas? 

I must say that I did, but not so much in the way I expected it. 

Probably an unrealistic item on my wish-list, but going into this Christmas all I wanted was an undivided conversation with each member of my family.  Twenty minutes, me and you, family member – we can sneak our chat in between two layers of peppermint bark (that red tin is my water cooler).

Turned out, not as a surprise to anyone, Rug-rats ruled the day.  As they should have; we once did.  I knew this going into it, we knew it (as discussed in Happy Christmas).  Amongst the camera flashes, diaper changes, demolishing of gift boxes (“oh… no… box!”), lost phones, dangerously high coffee-cup counts, and, well yes, Elmo, there was sparsely time for a deep conversation or a true catch-up session.

 

Short conversations were kept short, because there was always someone else to talk to, something else to eat, or another baby to hold or pull away from the tree.  Every inch of my Sister’s house was treaded on, kids and parents from wall to wall.  It was crazy, certainly for someone who is slowly getting used to living in an IKEA showroom. 

Now back in the UK, I must admit that the fat man failed to deliver on the one-on-one time.   The trip was, and truthfully still is, a blur of epic proportions.  So I didn’t get long heart-to-hearts over a cigar.  But what I did get was positively received and forgone: quick spurts of conversation and spit-up.  With family, and your heart’s desire to capture all that you can of it, you take what you can get.  Asking for an undivided moment with each family member was where I went wrong, because it is not possible.  We are our family.  A conversation with me is muted if I silence the influences my family has on me.  In other words, you cannot have a conversation with just me.  Even if it is just me and you, our families are part of the action.  Like it or not, the sum of us is them. 

This is clear to me now:  a chat with my brother holding his baby, or one of my sister’s babies, is no different than a talk with him alone (at Staples center).  So maybe Santa was good to me after all!