"Please have snow, and mistletoe, and presents 'neath the tree..."

I have two brothers.

My little brother is three years younger than me, and is one of my favorite people in the world. He’s smart, cute, funny, wise, and thoughtful. I am always slightly surprised that he is related to me, even though we look enough alike to be mistaken for twins. He is easy to be with, because he truly doesn’t mind doing whatever people feel like doing, or he has some cool ideas of his own; he’s usually up for anything. He’s interested, and interesting.

My older brother is older than me by four years. He is also smart, and I guess he’s cute, but if he were not my brother, I would never ever in a million years want to spend time with him. He is the diametric opposite of my little brother – he is the hardest person to be with I have ever encountered in my life. *He* says he’s laidback; I would argue that he is not, but he IS dull. He also says he’s up for anything, but barring anything else going on, he would sooner go to bed at seven pm and sleep for twelve hours. Not that this sort of activity does not have its place, but not while visiting in a household of three small boys. He is not interested in other people; he’s not even all that interested in his own life.

Some of my and C’s trouble is that he very much takes after my mother, and she and I did not exactly have a stress-free relationship, regardless of how much we may have loved one another. If there is offense to be taken, C takes it, and then he pouts and sulks. If he is angry, he doesn’t talk, he just withdraws.

Last summer he promised my boys he would come meet us down the shore. All day Wednesday I kept reassuring my boys, “Uncle C will be here by naptime/dinner/bedtime/when you wake up.” Until I finally reached the conclusion that 1) he wasn’t coming, and 2) there was nothing to be done about it. I was worried that maybe he’d been in a car wreck, so after repeatedly and to no avail calling his cell phone (which he never answers; if I want to talk to him, I have to leave him a message and wait for him to get back to me) I phoned his workplace; he works overnight, and he had been in the night before. He was fine. I found out months later that his boss at work would not give him the days off he wanted, and instead of calling me and explaining and maybe venting a little bit, he just did not show up, disappointing my three sons and pissing me off. He never returned any of my phone calls that week.

This Thanksgiving he said he was coming. Recalling the beach debacle, I called him to confirm a couple times. Then he called me Wednesday evening and left a message, “I am not coming.” That’s it, no explanation, no apology. When I spoke to my little brother D Thanksgiving day, he told me that C was sick. But not a word of that to me, just an abrupt “I won’t be there.”

If these were anomalies in his behavior, I might react differently, but the fact is that he has always been a difficult person, and a difficult houseguest. Honestly, he’s a bit of a strange agent; he has two broken engagements to his credit because he dates insane women, he works crazy, night-turn hours at a brainless manual-laborer position for which he is amazingly overqualified, because he can’t be bothered to exert the effort a job more befitting his skills and intelligence would demand, and he lives in revolting squalor in a pit of an apartment with his cat. I used to think it was refreshing and honest that he had arranged his entire life so as to enable him to play as much ice hockey as possible; now I just think it’s sort of sad. Especially as he got into a really competitive league but pulled out because it’s “too much hassle” to deal with scheduling the games and his work hours.
If he weren’t my brother, I would probably be even harsher, but since he is, I will just venture my guess that he is clinically depressed at the very least, and possibly a sociopath at the worst.

He says he’s easy-going but to my eyes it’s more that he does whatever he pleases, when he pleases.
He can be charming - when he wants to be.
He can be wonderful with the boys - but makes no bones about the fact that he much prefers babies to older children, because they are pliable.
He could be handsome but he always looks like he needs a good scrub.
It’s hard to believe that at one point, H and I thought it would be a great idea to ask him to come live with us, occupying the third-floor apartment.

Christmas is a time for family. But my extended family unit seems to grow smaller and smaller with each year, as my aunts and uncles, most of whom are in their late eighties, die off, and my cousins move around the country for work and/or spouses. My younger brother lives three hundred miles away, with his wife and baby, and we don’t see each other nearly as much as we would like – he lives much closer to his in-laws,, and they are wonderful people whom I would spend as much time with as possible, too. My older brother is more or less by himself – he has standing invitations to dinner, visit, or trips with a few of my cousins and younger aunts and uncles, but he keeps very much to himself. My cousin P who lives less than ten miles from him and has a son on whom C doted when little M was a baby, has not seen C in close to three years, and not for lack of trying on her part. He has voluntarily - indeed, with seemingly great effort - removed himself from the family sphere.

And he just called – out of the blue, pretty much, the first time since the message bagging out on Thanksgiving – and asked if he could come up Christmas Eve. He is invited to my cousin J’s big family Christmas Eve soiree, and Christmas dinner at P’s. But he wants to drive three hundred miles up here, to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with me and my boys.

And I am conflicted.
Relations between H and me are decent, humming along fairly nicely, due to hard work and lots of communication effort. I’d rather not jeopardize the fragile peace we have achieved by adding the strain of socializing with my misfit brother to H’s tasks.
I have no interest in setting up my children for another round of disappointment, lest Uncle C not show – as seems to be quickly becoming his habit.
And Christmas Eve at my in-laws is the most stressful day of the year for me; I need some serious alcohol and maybe a Valium to get through it relatively unscathed.
I don’t want to add C to the mix.
I DON”T WANT to add C to the mix.
It’s that simple.
I just don’t want to.

I called my little brother’s wife, who is a generous and sweet woman, to discuss my feelings with her. She is nice enough to want to do the right thing, but smart enough to understand the dynamic in our family. She is the objective outsider with the inside track. I knew she could guide me a little bit. She thinks I should tell C that he is welcome anytime after Christmas, anytime that whole week, but Christmas Eve is going to be stressful enough, and we have all been ill, and he should come up at the earliest Christmas night.

I want to accept this verdict. If only I were not so conflicted. I trust her, and her instincts, and what she proposes is reasonable. (Chances are distinctly good that just my hesitation, my “Let me check and call you back” rather than my usual, “We would love to see you anytime!” already told the tale to C, and he is possibly already in a snit, and won’t show up or call for months again now.)

I don’t WANT him here for Christmas.

And yet – Christmas is a time for family.

And yet…

And yet…

And yet.