Trouble in Paradise or the First Fight of the Year

New Year is full of resolutions that last about five minutes. I stopped making them years and years ago when I realised it's not years that are important, but days. Every day should contain a seed of better behaviour, clearer objectives, less swearing and more piano practice. Big sweeping declarations are for the theatre. Makeup, stage lights and surges of clapping. Bullsheet. None of us have any idea what we will be thinking in September.

One of my longterm resolutions, almost a twin sister of mine, has been to cutout the freak-out. I mean, Don't lose your cool, Catherine. I mean, try to look through to the other end of the moment and see how frantic and uncontrolled you appear from the other side. Don't lose it. 

But I do lose it. I've just lost it now.

You wonder whether in disassembling a moment that has passed whether there is any lesson to be learned. When you see the jagged spot where you should have bitten your tongue and not lashed out. When you drive back along the glittery snowy road now devoid of holidaymakers. When you sit there in the silent car thinking, is it my fault that I have raised an ungrateful, demanding teen? Or am I just caved in, playing the victim, as was said?

As mothers we are always juggling plates and often - for me - at least one drops.  You are thinking about the jammed road all the way home down the mountain, the rent to pay, bills galore, your crappy work status, the homework to nag about, the dog on heat, the house now a male hovel to clean, the extra 150kms driving tomorrow to resettle Ungrateful Diva... and how the hell do we get to the end of the month.

And then to be pushed off a shelf. Told that, Why should you be any more tired of driving than anybody else? When you freak out at the bl***y long queue of public holiday skiers and tell a certain lazy teen to get out and walk the short walk to the ski slope. (And this after 650+kms driving lately, including midnight forays into the -10 night to heat up an ailing engine.)

Sorry doll but this was a red flag to this stomping steaming bull.

We all know that suicides and domestic violence surge when families spend too much time together over Christmas. Too much alcohol, sluggish digestion of rich foods, cramped kitchens and rubbish to be taken out, bright lights in supermarkets and the empty fridge. I was fine through all of this. I've had wonderfully helpful family members here on holiday, it's just my own damned kids.

But I could have a saviour. My hit-of-last-year writer Simon van Booy has written a philosophy book called Why We Fight. This book will be the first book I order this year.

How about you? Did anybody make you lose it over the silly season?

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Read a great writer interview and review of Pelt and Other Stories on www.whisperinggums.com