Moscow Rule 4 - Don't Look Back, You Are Never Completely Alone

It is remarkable how liberating sending that email was.

Joe responded, ALL CAPS, denying having said anything to Mom. A weak disavowing, just like his one to Mom about complaints about her.

But who cares, really?

I can not for my own sense of sanity get roped into the nonsense Estelle is so famous for churning up at all the most convenient moments.

The adolescent in me wants to defiantly go toe-to-toe with her. Play her game. Tell tales out of school. Recall in vivid, mind boggling detail, for all the people in her life, all the missteps she's made (in my estimation only and subject to my imagination and embellishment, just like her stories had been). Maybe she'd like to hear from her friends and family how little I thought of her at different times and what a huge disappointment she has been?

Let's be honest. The tales I could recall with very little intellectual effort would read like an Amy Winehouse memoir. Imagine what I could cough up if I asked around! Charlotte and my college roommate could fill volumes 3 and 4 without taking a breath.

But I decided it was not worth it. I had Christmas to look forward to and plans to make. Gifts to wrap and menus to plan. And I had Charlotte and her family. Love and Joy come to me.

Charlotte, though sitting ringside in the blood and sweat seats was holding her ground. Being the Peacemaker simply by being peaceful.

Mom was altering her plans. Funny how all the years of asking her to alter her plans could not accomplish that. Charlotte was open to some flexibility - so long as she could be at my house to participate in my family's little ahead-of-schedule Christmas on Christmas Eve as planned. Mom could bend to what was planned. My issues were not Charlotte's. This was not between Mom and Charlotte. It was an important distinction to make. Like the one I make about Charlotte's issue with the Open Door/XBox/Cat Poop debacle. I don't approve of Joe's conduct but it is not my home he is banished from (yet).

I had already arranged for the 3rd party delivery of my gifts to Mom and Bill and to Joe's kids. They'd been hand delivered to Joe's house a few days earlier. I had to assume that Mom would find a way to still see her ally Joe. And that between now and then Joe would make sure his youngest child did not tear open and attempt to destroy all of the gifts like she had in years gone by. Big assumption, but I was not about to waste a brain synapse on worrying about it.

Things, remarkably, were looking up. I was going to have a holly, jolly Christmas in spite of it all.