Every year it's the same damn thing, and it's my own fault.
I have an overactive imagination. I always envisioned lovely homey scenes of my daughters helping me make Christmas cookies, deck the halls, and generally get ready for our Christmas Eve dinner with guests, our traditional Christmas morning waffles and whipped cream and strawberries, and the semi-annual car trek to New York to see their Italian family.
Perhaps I read too much. I always envisioned scenes of Ma Ingalls, cooking and cleaning happily alongside Laura, Mary, Carrie, and Grace. Or those lovely March sisters lovingly assisting their beloved Marmie with all things Christmas.
Instead I get indifference to the cookies, requests to turn down the choral music so they can turn up the iTunes, snotty looks, grunts, and other nonverbal communication. I never read that Jo March and her sisters fought over the computer and who had to dust. And Laura certainly never told Ma Ingalls to just "chill" or "get over it!". Reality hurts.
