What do you do if you don’t care for older people to whom you’re vaguely “related”, and with whom you’ve been invited to share Christmas dinner with? The conventional answer is “grim up and suffer thorough it.” But maybe not, I’m thinking. Plus I’ve always sensed that they don’t care for my company either…fine. It’s almost a relief.
They’re ”nice” people, considerate, unfailingly polite, etc. But also a bit dull, sedate, incurious, not very well travelled and certainly not my idea of attuned to the here-and-now. I find them sleepily oppressive, and I really don’t want that vibe in my head. So I’m politely stepping back from Christmas Day dinner…no offense, not the end of the world.
What’s the problem exactly? A feeling of novocained numbness when they’re in a room. A minimum of verbal out-reach. A general lack of eye contact. A lack of laughter, wit, audacity. A basic lack of interest and inquisitiveness and opinions. I’d much rather hang out with neurotic actors or alcoholics or gambling junkies or Satanists, even, than fuddy-duds and flatliners.
In my mid teens my mother once confided that her mother Dorothy (my maternal grandmother) had made it clear on one or two occasions that she didn’t care for my father’s father (my paternal granddad). Family relations lean this way from time to time. We just have to roll with the fact that certain people are anathema to each other.