All Natural: An Obligatory Christmas Post

My brother is the family champion as far as procreation is concerned, and he and his wife have produced the world's most laid back three year old. She is always happy; has no known vegetable phobiae; is perfectly distracted by crayons, making her a pleasant companion in restaurants; and does not cry ever, even at the harsh, three-way intersection of gravity, hardwood flooring and roller skates. She is, in other words, as close to perfect as a three year old can be.

My mother was understandably thrilled at the arrival of a grandchild. She had written me off -- disqualified on a technicality, you might say -- and had reached a point of frustrated resignation with my brother after years of pestering. The arrival of a granddaughter three years ago was the physical manifestation of all her Christmases come true.

The three year old is calm and quiet. But my mother, elated to have said three year old in the family, has somehow vacuumed up her grand daughter's latent loudness, leaving shrieking as her primary means of communication. She has for unknown reasons nicknamed the three year old "Girly Girl," a name she calls out in such a piercingly high-pitched tone that it puts an involuntary crick in my neck and causes my brother's elderly Jack Russell terrier to flee the room.

It's one thing at home. I can handle it at home. But in the cereal aisle of the madhouse CostCo in Denver, next to the nice ladies giving out free samples of mini quiche and Mediterrenean pizza and blueberry-pomegranate juice ("all natural," all three assured me) -- this aggression cannot stand.

***

My parents and I have generally agreed not to talk politics. I had spent most of October aggressively canvassing for Obama, while my parents have turned the corner from mad-dog republicans into full on tea party patriots.  "You never call," my mother said at Thanksgiving, but I had nothing non-partisan to say, and she takes Yes We Can -- Si Se Puede! -- as a personal affront. Communication by fleeting text message seemed the only solution.

("At dinner. Having crabcakes. Will call you this weekend," I would lie, hoping the crabcakes would distract her into forgetting that we hadn't spoken since September).

My parents are tea party patriots and suffer from the surfeit of rage that tends to plague Fox News's core viewership. Surviving any major holiday thus requires an IV drip-level of consistency in alcohol consumption, and the greater Denver area consequently saw a spike in sauvignon blanc sales during my time there. I was aided and abetted by my brother's wife's mother, whose veins run with malbec and who constantly reassured me that 11 is far from too early to start drinking. "I'm not sure why you waited so long," she'd say, corkscrew in hand.

The elections in general and the Obama campaign in particular provided a focal point for my parents' simmering rage. When November sixth came and went, dashing their hopes for a president who understands that taking money from the rich is unconstitutional (is communism; no, is quite simply un-American and is really just plain wrong), it left my mother's wrath in free-floating form, with no obvious target. It seems that said wrath has been redirected at my father, though not in any manner that would be deemed rational.

There was, for example, a brief moment during Christmas dinner when my mother verbally assaulted my father for passing food in a counterclockwise direction around the table.

My brother and I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, and my parents both pretend to like to cook, though in reality my father installed a second microwave in their home so their dinners could be done at the same time. At one point my mother declared that she wants to break into vegan cooking, and my father, brother and I all simultanously asked why, lacing the question with a healthy degree of derision. My mother ignored my brother and I and whirled her head around at my father. "As IF I have to EXPLAIN myself to YOU," she hissed.

My brother tried to cut the tension: "The only reason to cook vegan," he said "is if you have a vegan friend who's become unbearably annoying about it."

It was just after 11 in the morning, and I poured myself another glass of sauvignon blanc. "It's all natural," I assured my now-vegan-friendly, tea party patriot mother.