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The Holiday Hangover
Winter cheer isn’t on the menu this year.
I thought I’d finally have some one-on-one time with the couch and a football game, but Halley — my wife — wasn’t having it.
“We need to take the kids downtown to see the decorations before New Year’s,” she said, all matter-of-fact, and it was a colossal struggle not to roll my eyes.
“It’s only December 26th,” I said, “and we just got through with looking at the neighborhood decorations last night. Do we need to overdo it? I thought we were trying to raise them to be minimalists who didn’t depend on capitalism?”
She ignored my social commentary talk and took the remote. The beginning of the game blipped off the screen. “Jack, these are their formative years. Do you want them to have no values? No traditions? Just think of the kind of teenagers you might be raising in a few years.”
“I lived on a farm with no Christmas parties or shindigs for twenty years, and I turned out all right.”
Her silence alone contradicted the truth of my words. “Just come with us,” she said, and her tone told me she was already tired with the prospect of an argument. I might have fought her a bit more on the issue, but then I remembered the pajamas I’d bought her in a size too small — another failing I’d racked up as a negligent husband…
