by Bethany Maines
I’ve been enjoying this week of Thanksgiving reflections on
the Stiletto Gang. Each one reminds me of my own family and all the little
moments that go along with holidays.
My grandmother’s unstoppable
attraction to returning to the kitchen just as we were about to pray.
“Mama, sit down! We can’t eat the meal until you sit
down!”
“Well, yes, but just one more
thing…”
Grandpa hacking up the turkey with
the electric carving knife, which gave way to Dad eyeballing the turkey with
suspicion and frustration as the perfect cut always eludes him. Until last year when my thirteen year
old cousin arrived fresh from watching the cooking channel.
“Well, first you cut off the
drumsticks and then you cut here, here and here.”
“You know, it sounds like you’ve
got a real plan. Why don’t you try
it? I’ll help steady the bird.”
My cousins eyes lit up like a
Christmas tree, and we all admitted that his cutting job was pretty darn good.
My German cousins confusion about
the fact that my mom makes an entire pan of stuffing (we all eat too much of it
to make it in the turkey) and the fact that we’d never noticed that this
invalidated the basic premise of stuffing until she pointed it out.
“Yes,
but what is it?”
“It’s
stuffing.”
“But
it’s not been in the bird?”
“Oh. Um… I guess it’s not stuffing. It’s stuffing type stuff.”
The year my mom spontaneously
invited the boy I had barely started seeing to Thanksgiving. I really should have known better than
to bring him by the house.
“But
mom, that was only our second date!”
“But
he doesn’t have anywhere to go!
And he’s from Virginia.”
Since
Grandma was born in Virginia that meant it would the height of rudeness to turn
him away, since clearly he was practically family. The Virginia argument invalidated all other arguments.
The
mad scramble every year to draw names for Christmas gifts and the year we all
managed to forget, so my cousin and I became the designated pickers.
“Aren’t
we going to draw names?”
“Well,
your aunt and uncle just left, and I think Grandma’s asleep. So I guess not.”
“We
should use a random number generator and just assign everyone.”
“Great,
I’ll get some paper and a pen.”
That
worked out quite well for me because I “randomly” managed to assign myself one
of the family’s better bakers and got an entire plateful ginger molasses
cookies. She who does the picking
gets to pick – just saying.
Each Thanksgiving has the same
soothing routine of football and turkey and wishing I’d worn pants with an elastic
waist. But each Thanksgiving is
also different as we give thanks for the new babies and the new spouses and
remember the relatives that are no longer with us. The tradition connects us with those who have gone before us
and I, for one, wouldn’t have it any other way.
Dyson will never let any harm come to you obviously. Probably be a good idea not to use your computer around him anymore. I work in a room that I don't let the cats in, that way they can't disturb me or clog my computer up with cat hair.
ReplyDeleteStuffing that is cooked outside the bird is 'dressing' in my family! As in my grandmother would also make oyster dressing for the men in the family... everyone else wanted the stuffing from inside the bird.. It is still confusing!!
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