shereads
Sloganless
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2003
- Posts
- 19,242
I want to go home for the holidays, but home doesn't exist anymore. When my dad was alive, home was wherever my parents were living. When he died and she moved back to her hometown, that was home; a tiny little Peyton Place of a town with so many elderly aunties and cousins-in-law that anyone younger than 70 needed an organizational chart to keep track of them. My mom bought a cozy little house not far from the place where she grew up. We filled it with her favorite things, and it was home.
Thanksgiving dinners in my mom's hometown were exhausting events conducted by my mom's older sister, until she passed away two years ago.
She was an obsessively maternal control freak and former professional cook, who couldn't rest until she'd baked at least 2 pies and 3 kinds of cake, not counting fruitcake, which had to be offered on principal even though no one eats fruitcake. There were so many people for Thanksgiving dinner that folding tables and chairs had to be borrowed from neighbors and church recreation halls. The Good China was used, whether or not there was enough of it, and even if it had to be supplemented with plastic flatware.
There was alwsays a turkey the size of a cocker spaniel, three pans of cornbread dressing, and a spiral-sliced Honey Baked Ham that actually grew larger as the evening wore on. (My aunt, had the United Nations asked for her help, could have made one spiral-sliced ham feed a small nation; two nations, if there was enough white bread for sandwiches.)
No one walked away from my aunt's table. We rolled to the floor; the unlucky ones who sat in arm chairs had to be pried loose by a team of volunteer firemen using the Jaws of Life.
No matter what time dinner was supposed to be served, there was always a delay of several hours to get more chairs or arrange a ride for a stranded relative, or issue a last-minute invitation to whoever was new in the neighborhood and living alone. The noise was deafening: crying babies, squealing children, my hard-of-hearing uncle's two TV sets tuned to different sporting events, and the shouts of women trying to get his attention. By the time dinner was served, you weren't hungry anymore because you'd swiped some dinner rolls when you were on the verge of fainting from hunger an hour ago. If you didn't eat some of everything, my aunt's feelings would be hurt and she would pout until Easter. So eat, you did. Urp.
Afterwards, you'd have given anything for a nap, but all the bedrooms were piled with the suitcases of visiting relatives, or the winter coats of houseguests. If you were used to living alone, you craved solitude like a junkie craves heroin. The evening never seemed to end.
Anyone with a brain dreaded Thanksgiving dinner for weeks before the actual meal.
God, how I miss it.
Thanksgiving dinners in my mom's hometown were exhausting events conducted by my mom's older sister, until she passed away two years ago.
She was an obsessively maternal control freak and former professional cook, who couldn't rest until she'd baked at least 2 pies and 3 kinds of cake, not counting fruitcake, which had to be offered on principal even though no one eats fruitcake. There were so many people for Thanksgiving dinner that folding tables and chairs had to be borrowed from neighbors and church recreation halls. The Good China was used, whether or not there was enough of it, and even if it had to be supplemented with plastic flatware.
There was alwsays a turkey the size of a cocker spaniel, three pans of cornbread dressing, and a spiral-sliced Honey Baked Ham that actually grew larger as the evening wore on. (My aunt, had the United Nations asked for her help, could have made one spiral-sliced ham feed a small nation; two nations, if there was enough white bread for sandwiches.)
No one walked away from my aunt's table. We rolled to the floor; the unlucky ones who sat in arm chairs had to be pried loose by a team of volunteer firemen using the Jaws of Life.
No matter what time dinner was supposed to be served, there was always a delay of several hours to get more chairs or arrange a ride for a stranded relative, or issue a last-minute invitation to whoever was new in the neighborhood and living alone. The noise was deafening: crying babies, squealing children, my hard-of-hearing uncle's two TV sets tuned to different sporting events, and the shouts of women trying to get his attention. By the time dinner was served, you weren't hungry anymore because you'd swiped some dinner rolls when you were on the verge of fainting from hunger an hour ago. If you didn't eat some of everything, my aunt's feelings would be hurt and she would pout until Easter. So eat, you did. Urp.
Afterwards, you'd have given anything for a nap, but all the bedrooms were piled with the suitcases of visiting relatives, or the winter coats of houseguests. If you were used to living alone, you craved solitude like a junkie craves heroin. The evening never seemed to end.
Anyone with a brain dreaded Thanksgiving dinner for weeks before the actual meal.
God, how I miss it.
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