So I’ve come to a drunken epiphany, as I compose this champagne-infused post later on this lovely Christmas Eve… the older I get, the more necessary alcohol has become in my parental interactions. I mean, it never used to be this way – visiting with the ‘rents was simply visiting. Holidays simply signfied delicious food. But now, it seems that they inevitably signify “down as much alcohol as possible during any and all festive parental interactions”. When exactly did this shift occur? At what point did it become tradition for my mother, stepfather and I to down two bottles of champagne between the three of us, in the space of one hour, with nothing else in our stomachs (save some raw carrot juice, of *course*, and some [not raw] Harry & David chocolates that grandma Dorothy sent us)? Seriously. At some point, post-21 but apparently pre-25, alcohol becomes an essential, vital, mandatory element (all of those adjectives were provided by my mother, the self-titled “walking lexicon”, since she entered the room and I was drunk enough to (a) stop freaking about whether she’d be offended by what she might happen to read upon the screen; and (b) ask her for synonyms for “necessary” since it was the only word I could come up with but it didn’t sound eloquent enough)… this whole alcohol-cum-parents thing is a groundbreaking anthropological discovery, indeed. Meredith, I hope you’re taking notes :)
Merry Christmas again, everyone (bubbles, bubbles, everywhere…)
P.S. Y’all have NO idea how much effort it took to avoid typos in this post. *hic*