My mother's family has a bit of a holiday tradition, going back decades. On Christmas morning, everyone goes where the kids are. When I was a child, my sisters and I were the only grandchildren. My mom's brothers came down from Cincinnati. My great-aunt flew in from Philadelphia, as she had been doing for four decades ever since her brother and his kids moved away from Philly; before that she used to drive across town in the pre-dawn hours to get to the house before the kids woke up so she could watch them find their presents from Santa. When I was in high school, it came back to bite me, as my mom got her three teenagers out of the house and bundled in the car on Christmas morning to trek up to Cincinnati because my uncle now had kids of his own, and they were the little ones so we all had to go there for Christmas morning.
Christmas morning is a thing in my family. It's one reason my mom was so hurt when my b!tchy sister announced four years ago that she was staying home on Christmas morning and none of us were invited. But I didn't mind, because it meant that when Mr. J and I started our family, we had dibs on the grandparents (and sure enough, once she realized that her kids were getting left out, Sis decided that my mom could come over to her house after our house). For the past couple of years, we've hosted the grands -- my mom makes her special cinnamon rolls. we have coffee, eggs, sausage or bacon, maybe some fruit if we are really ambitious, and everyone chills together for a little bit to watch the kids unwrap their presents. It's low-key but it's really nice.
So I was pretty darn surprised on Christmas Eve night when Mr. Mama told me as we were all leaving Mass that she and Mr. Papa would not be coming over in the morning. "It's just too much for you now that you have two kids," she said. I said, "But my parents will be coming." She breezed right past that and headed out the door.
In the car, I asked Mr. J what he knew about this. "She told me five minutes ago," he said. "She thinks it will be nice for us to have some time with just our family in the morning." Say what now? Honey, take that load on up the road to dump it, nobody is buying it here. This isn't about us needing family time - and thanks, Mr. Mama, for making that unsolicited decision on our behalf. No, this is about Mr. Mama not being a morning person. She hates to get up and go anywhere before 11 a.m.
I said, "Well, my parents are coming," and Mr. J said, "Next year it can be just us." I said, "No, my parents will always come. It's a thing in my family." He said, "Well, but that's not equal time for the grandparents if your parents get Christmas morning too. How will that look to the kids?" Um. No. I'm not telling my mom she can't see her grandchildren on Christmas morning because his mom doesn't like to get out of bed that early. Since when did we set grandparenting by the lowest common denominator? By that measure, none of the grandparents would see our kids but once every two years, since that is as often as J-Dad can be arsed to come and visit.
I explained to Mr. J that disinviting my mom from Christmas morning would destroy generations of her family tradition. If Mr. Mama doesn't want to come, that's fine, but my mom is coming, every year. What I didn't say was, we have smart kids, I don't think they will have to wait for Christmas to figure out that Grandma puts a much higher priority on spending time with them than Mr. Mama does.
Mr. J is pretty smart too. He called his dad and lo and behold, the Mr. Grands were on hand when the Bear found his Santa presents under the tree.
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