GORDON LIGHTFOOT | Culture
ALL ABOUT BALANCE
54-year-old mother of three boys, Claire Molesworth, was all about keeping the universe in perfect balance this Christmas. This was not to say she was looking for joy-filled festivities with friends and family — far from it. Instead, Claire’s goal for the day was to balance her own stress levels with those of her family by intentionally aggravating them at regular intervals.
“I still haven’t started making any of the salads and I still need to get in the shower and get changed,” she barked on Christmas morning in the lead-up to the family lunch. “Paul, when are you going to go and get the ice? We haven’t got any ice!”
Her husband Paul, meanwhile, had already been to get ice and it was safely tucked away in the second freezer, the one Claire famously never opens.
“I put it in the other freezer on purpose,” he admitted. “Just to let her think I hadn’t done it for a second or two. On Christmas Day she’s not happy unless she’s got something to stress about.”
Luke, their 12-year-old eldest son, naïvely decided this would be the year he finally offered to help.
“I told Mum I could set the table, so I put the Christmas tablecloth out with the crackers and the knives and forks,” he said. “But once I did it, she had a meltdown because apparently everything was crooked, upside-down, I’d put out the wrong spoons, or something. She took it all off and started again.”
Luke paused, staring into the middle distance with the weary gaze of a much older man.
“So instead of getting yelled at I might just see if Dad wants to let me have one of his beers this year.”
Claire, meanwhile, was attempting to make the house look so perfect you might think it was being put on the market. Her parents and brother were coming over, which apparently made it a life and death situation.
“God, I just had to re-do the tablecloth because I’m apparently the only one capable of doing anything around here, and Paul STILL hasn’t got any ice,” she said, forgetting entirely that Paul had told her, only moments earlier, that the ice was in the other freezer.
As the family continued tiptoeing around the house in a state of fear, it became clear that Christmas lunch wasn’t about food, or family, or festive spirit. It was about achieving the perfect, delicate equilibrium of stress — and Claire was determined to get everyone up to her level before midday.
More to come.
