Alas, a rerun, but with a new ending this time. …
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Thanksgiving is a great holiday. Food, no religion, no gift-giving pressure. Growing up, Thanksgiving was about getting out the good china, polishing my grandmother’s silver, and filching black olives from the appetizer tray–one for each finger tip. The windows steamed up, pots clanked, and my sister muscled through the potatoes with a wire masher to the clackety-clack rhythm of a horse in a trot on a city street. Oh, who’s kidding whom? It’s a tense disaster of a day in our family.
The day would start innocently enough, with a parade on tv, and the big hunt about to commence. Bob White and his glam wife Ellie, would arrive from “the cities” in their 1970s-flotilla Lincoln Continental–their Bloody Marys ensconced in cupholders (way before cupholders were de rigeur) and Bob’s revered rifle in the trunk. Bob was a 6-foot 5 Mr Magoo. Always a little tipsy, he was a larger-than-life entertainer. He could tell a joke, improvise boogie-woogie on the piano, and tell a helluva joke. A grain dealer, he spent his days with a phone to his ear and his evenings with a drink in hand at the Little Wagon or Richards in Minneapolis.
But on Thanksgiving morning, he was in Iowa, for the big pheasant hunt. He fancied himself a Hemingway sort, hoping to relive some sort of male-bonding fraternity of his youth. I’d beg and beg to go along, and more often than not I got my wish. It was more about being where the fun was than killing a poor pheasant, because as we all know, men have more fun than women on holidays. And my mother was not having fun in that kitchen.
Her turkey is seared in our memories. It would begin about three days before Thanksgiving when she’d put the rock-solid frozen bird in a pan in the garage to thaw out (on the logic that it was cooler in the garage than inside). When sufficiently thawed, she’d move it in to the kitchen counter for a day because there was no longer enough room in the fridge. There it would sit, all pink-skinned and goose-pimply.
In the meantime (meaning about a week before–she’s’ a planner, that one), she’d cream some onions, bake the sweet potatoes until their skin was dry and cracked (no marshmallows for us), and do something nearly unrecognizable with Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, canned green beans, and onion rings. All of which sat on the counter or in the fridge, uncovered (she has a distaste for aluminum foil or that new-fangled Saran wrap.)
Thanksgiving day itself would start before dawn, when that bird finally went into the oven. From then on, it was nonstop muttering and clanking pots. We were banned, banned from entering the kitchen. If you dared to enter, asking, say, for some more nuts, the glare alone would drive you back to the television room nut-free. “What do you want more nuts for?” she’d bark. “They’ll just spoil your dinner.” (That, I believe, was the point. We’d been here before).
In the midst of this somewhere, we hunters would return, glorious in our prize. We’d have generously plucked the birds already, and Bob White–not understanding the code of behavior–would stride into the no-fly zone and plop the newly dead birds into the sink. OMG.
Any kitchen on Thanksgiving is a choreographed dance that only the host knows, and it’s best to take on a task like folding napkins or filling water glasses. I learned this valuable lesson at a tender age 8. Bob White never, ever figured that out.
My mother would take that pheasant, slam it into a pan, and shove it in the oven, with the pellets still poking out of its skin. She was having none of it.
Finally, a few hours later, Sally would be summoned to mash the potatoes and we’d know the moment was near when the bird would come out of the 275 degree oven, where it had been for the past 8 hours. Right behind it were the pheasants, now about one-third their original size, browned to a crisp. “Dad,” she’d bellow, her voice dropping an ominous octave, “come and carve the [bleep-bleeped] bird.” A twinkle in his eye, and a wink, he’d kick down the footrest on his Lazy-Boy and say (with what I now think was a hint of dread), “I guess it’s time to eat.”
The kitchen was a scene of war-torn chaos. Dad in one corner, man-handling the bird with a blade that hadn’t been sharpened since 1948. Bob White looming, crest-fallen over his destroyed pheasant. Mom dodging people to get the green beans reheated while realizing she forgot to put the bread in the oven. Sue, my other sister, would be trying to wrest some semblance of order out of it all. And Elli, wise Ellie, would be sitting at the table, cracking a joke with a cocktail in her hand.
Dutifully, we’d take our seats at the table, where the sweet pickles, hunks of celery (bite-size were never in her vocabulary), and one remaining olive sat lonely on the “salad” plate. We’d tuck into the food, then someone would remember to say grace. We’d try to recall the words to a prayer and resort to “good food, good meat, good God let’s eat,” and we’d begin. Ten minutes later, done–with a few stray bb’s on our plates to attest to the grand hunt that morning. The bird? Well, we’re a family of dark meat eaters if that’s any signal.
After dinner, we girls would wash the endless dishes, cracking a window to let some air in the steamed-up room. Eventually a group of us hardy souls would take a walk, shivering in the moonless night, our voices carrying for seemingly miles in the crisp air. Back home, the table cloth would come off and a card game or a game of Pit would commence, a second round of food would make its way from the fridge, but eventually, like any holiday, it would end for another year.
I realize now that about as quickly as we ate that meal, time has passed. Bob and Ellie are both gone now, as are my sister Sue and her husband Jerry. The house where we all grew up is owned by another family making its own memories. Dad shuffles down the hall with the help of a walker. The piano is silent.
But, gradually, we make new memories. This year, my niece-in-law Sunny is cooking the meal out at the family “ranch,” which once belonged to Sue and Jerry and is now where she and Eric (of birthday cake fame) live with their own kids. That house is filled with its own memories, of Jerry’s “put it on a cracker” happy hour concoctions, of Sue’s tidy kitchen and scented candles. Eric is shaking up tradition and planning to deep-fry the bird (no worries, he’s also one of the volunteer fireman in town). Tara, his sister, is bringing her own four kids, and my sister Sally’s son and wife and their kids are joining later.
The thing is, you can’t look back too long or you might miss the joy in the moment.
In Chicago, we dig out our cars and then place an old lawn chair or milk crate in the space to save it for when we return at night. The stress alone of wondering whether your spot will be there and if you will be forced to defend it is enough to keep you housebound. Then there’s the roof (hello Metrodome). And don’t get me started on navigating the curbs, where the shoveled snow has created a unleapable barrier between you and your destination. Fashion? fuggedaboutit. And a special pox on those slackers who don’t shovel their walks. You’re making great time, striding down the sidewalks until–the slacker. Instant geisha walk.
