The Family Circus

She's plotting. My mother is plotting.

Do all matriarch's do this?

I realize it is terribly inconvenient to have some kind of family rift when the holidays arrive. But the horse has left the barn with that in its saddlebag and she's not coming back.

It is what it is. And so what? It could be worse. None of the three of us could be speaking to each other. What would she do then? Aside from the regular garden variety heartache that would cause any mother, logistically speaking it is not exactly a Houston-we've-got-a-problem SNAFU.

Had my mother more patience, or even more time, she could simply visit each of us in our own homes. Breakfast with this one. Cocktails and dinner with that one. Catch up with the third for dessert and bring a nice pie.

The plot is thickening like a nice pudding...

Turns out Bill, bless his little Jack Daniels soaked heart, will not, under any circumstances, for any reason, even to retrieve my mother from their burning residence, set foot in my brother's house.

My mother says it is because he can not stand my sister in law.

Easy to understand, for sure. And well documented! There have been more than a few dinner table scenes where I have squirmed through his diatribe about his loathing for her even as she sits two seats away at the same table.

But I have it on good authority that he's not exactly keeping up a thriving pen pal relationship with my brother either.

However, Mom can't exactly admit that to anyone out loud.

And therein lies the dilemma.

Joe, and at least his kids (as far as my mother is concerned the shrew can sit at home in her bathrobe doing her last minute whatever it is that she actually does all day) have to go somewhere to see my mother.

And since my sister's foot is firmly planted in the stance she has taken about Joe ever setting foot into her home again after the Open Door/X-Box/Cat Poop Debacle, there are scant few remaining options.

In fact there is only one.

And the little cloud of doom has positioned itself squarely over my head.