Well, the holidays are nearly upon us.
I don’t know about you, but back when I was a kid, it was less about giblets and more about family ties.
Where I grew up in New York, with two households – one American and very expressive, the other Irish and very subdued – territorial rights to the biggest eating day of the year could become epic battles. Careful not to hurt anyone’s feelings, and to avoid rancor for the next holiday event, my parents divvied up the day by dropping in on both sets of grandparents for the feast.
We’d usually start with my mother’s family. What a time! As this also involved six cousins, their hyperactive dog and my grandparents’ terrified cat, it was a reality-TV episode before its time.
My grandmother would lay out a table in the dining room that could have passed for a Martha Stewart magazine layout. That, she assured us sternly, was for the adults.
We kids were relegated to the kitchen, where we had high times at the creaky formica table, grossing each other out, making burping sounds and getting into fights. Food was usually passed overhand. I recall a hard-boiled egg yolk sailing through the air and landing in my lap, from points unknown. And someone was usually eating their dinner under the table, to the frustration of the dog.
The spectacle was usually punctuated by adults opening the door every 15 minutes, shouting at us to keep it down so they could hear each other over the din. The dog usually would be slinking out as soon as the door opened, grateful for the reprieve.
Dessert was pretty much the same – by the end, at least one of my cousins would be wearing it, and someone else would spill a big cup of juice, ensuring nobody’s holiday outfit went unscathed.
Dinner and dessert finished, the families would then retire to the den, for an extra-big helping of remembered grudges against the other. For us kids, it was a party-time atmosphere of getting filled in on family secrets.
After grabbing us and scraping off dinner, dessert and juice as best they could, my parents would bundle my younger brother and I into the family Volkswagen and drive across town to my Dad’s parents’ house, where time appeared to stand still.
My grandparents, Irish immigrants, lived in a big brick building in downtown Mineola, right along the railroad tracks, where they ran a luncheonette on the ground floor five days a week. It was constant busy-ness for them, so by the time the holidays or weekends came, they were happy not to be moving.
We’d come to a scene of my grandmother puttering in the kitchen, talking quietly to herself, and my grandfather asleep in front of the television, with his slippers on. It was usually just talk shows, so we kids entertained ourselves by looking at the various framed images of the Kennedys, the Pope and martyred saints that lined the walls of the living room.
There was a prayer on the wall – about the JFK assassination – that I could never quite get my head around, so there was that to ponder, again and again.
Thanksgiving memories for me have always involved distinct sympathy for Jacquie O.
My mother would disappear into the kitchen, and we kids each were given a can of Coke and told firmly but kindly to keep the noise down. Given all the chaos we’d just left, we were grateful to do that, most of the time. My mother would often come back into the living room to find us asleep on the couch, my grandfather leading the sleep parade, still propped up in his armchair, wearing his slippers, as the talk-show hosts droned on.
Dinner was always wonderful – a roast or a turkey, with real mashed potatoes and butter – and some scary Irish entree, like turnips or cabbage. And food was passed, not thrown. My grandparents spoke quietly to my brother and me – as opposed to shouting over our heads – and it was a relaxing, swell time.
But I wouldn’t give up either kind of dinner: Thanksgiving is for families. And families, God bless them, are wonderful, noisy, quiet, blissful things. Even with flying hardboiled eggs.
Hope your Thanksgiving is filled with Joy.
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