| As fun as it was, the day was never restful. It started early, with cleaning the entire house. It did not matter if the party was going to be there or at some other relatives house, Mom insisted we get up no later than seven and start to clean, right away. There is no knowing why this had to be done, just that it was going to happen.
In a couple of hours the house is all spic and span (anyone know the etymology of that phrase?) and it was time to get a shower and then get into the "good clothes". This sucked, because once you were dressed and ready, you were not allowed to do anything else, in case you somehow managed to mess up your clothes and embarrass your family (yeah I know, if it is only family, why would it be embarrassing? It is a family thing, just go with it). So, there you sit on the sofa clean and neat and wait.
Since our family is so huge, you don't host very often. However Mom and Dad had bought a big house so about one in four Thanksgivings were held there. However, the holidays which stick in my mind are the ones which were held at Herself's house. Herself? Oh, that is what we call my maternal grandmother. She is the Matriarch of our family. If you think that is a honorary title, you are making a big mistake. Gladys has an iron will and is unafraid to use it wherever she sees fit.
Finally the time would come and we would all pile into Dad's Buick and off to Herself's house we would go. It was about a half hour drive, which to a kid can feel like anything from ten minutes to the length of an ice age. Being as Mom was the oldest, we would always be among the first to arrive.
In Michigan, almost no one uses the front door. It is this strange Mid-West thing, but the side or garage door is the most common way to enter a house there. Herself's house had this little ground level room, then three steps up to the kitchen. For as long as I can remember there would be two cases of Town Club Soda sitting there by the door, keeping cool.
I'm not sure if Towne Club still exists or not. It was a strange business model, to say the least. You could go there and get a case (24 tall bottles) of any flavor of soda you liked. They would come in a wooden case, and the flavors were strange to say the least. When is the last time any of you had a pineapple soda? Anyone remember Rock N' Rye? It was a sort of red cream soda. Uncle Tom would always have run down to Detroit to pick up this soda from the manufacturer the day before.
We would head up the three stairs to the heat and bustle of the kitchen. Herself would meet us at the door and insist we throw our coats on one of the beds in her room. I was often assigned this detail, so I would go into my Grandparents room and throw the coats on one of the two single beds in there. That's right, Herself and Grandpa slept in separate beds, single beds at that! It makes sense if you think about the fact birth control is prohibited by the Catholic Church and there were already 13 kids.
Over the next hour or so there would be a constant stream of arrivals, with Aunts, Uncles and cousins coming in. There would be the casual catch up conversations with the ones you did not see very often, lots of questions about how school was going, sage advice on what to do with paper route money, a million and two comments on how big you have grown or how nice you look in your "good clothes". All the while we would be munching on the huge platter of gigantic shrimp Uncle Ferg (short for Fergus, Herself's youngest brother) always brought.
Sooner rather than later, it would be time for dinner. The main table in the kitchen would be groaning with the amount of food piled on it. One of these holiday dinners could run to 40 people when I was around 10 years old. This would be just family and the boyfriends or girlfriends of the unmarried Aunts and Uncles. There would be a huge turkey and a ham. There would be two huge bowls of mashed potatoes with gallons of gravy on the side. There would be green beans with bacon, fresh rolls, aspect (blech!), steamed broccoli, cranberry sauce from a can, and of course stuffing, lots and lots and lots of stuffing!
Seating in a family like this says a lot about where you are in the political structure. Oh, I mention there is always politics going on here? The thing is there is kind of sweepstakes going on. Who will become the new Herself when the current one passes on? This is a matriarchy, so no boys need apply, but all the women in the family, consciously or unconsciously have been vying for this position my whole life. Since Mom is the oldest child and a woman, she is the presumptive heir, but the problem is she has no desire to be Herself. This makes for a lot of jockeying and below the radar politicking. There were tables in the living room, tables in the corner of the kitchen and tables set up in the ground floor room.
Depending on where one is in the approval/disapproval of the Herself sweepstakes, you could be seated next to Herself or exiled to a far corner of the house. For children it did not matter, all of us were exiled to the little room down stairs. As a child, you were expected to entertain yourselves all the while keeping the level of decorum Herself insisted on. To say it was a balancing act many of the grandkids failed is akin to saying the Sun will set in the West.
For me this exile was particularly hard. I am the oldest grandchild, and only seven years younger than my youngest aunt. There was something inherently unfair (to a child's mind anyway) to being sent to eat with the "little kids". Still this was Herself's will, and there was nothing to do for it, at least during dinner.
After the dinner was over, getting up stairs became the primary goal. There were two ways to go about this but the best strategy was to combine them. One sure fire way to be upstairs, at least for a while, was to volunteer for dish duty. It is not like you could get out of it in any case, but by volunteering you could stay the whole time the clean up was in progress. This gave you a chance to show off your conversational skills, and hopefully be invited to stay. That almost never happened. As soon as the last dish was dry and put away, you would be ushered into the basement room and the door would be firmly shut.
At that point the cards would come out. If you grew up in the Midwest or North East, you are probably a card player. In our family, the game was and is euchre. If you don't know euchre it is a game you play with partners. The deck is cut down to the face cards plus the Ten and Nine of all four suits. The teams bid for trump and try to get at least three of the tricks in the hand. Points are awarded for wining a hand or preventing a team from winning the hand. The game is played to ten points.
This is a really simple game to learn and it can take a lifetime to master. It is also the sure fire way to get upstairs and stay there, provided you can keep winning. I learned to play euchre whenI was ten, with the goal of permanently escaping exile. Just being able to play was not enough, you had to have an adult partner who would prevent Mom or any of the roving Aunts from bouncing you back down the stairs. This is where washing the dishes comes into the plan. By taking a long turn at dishes you had plenty of time to chat up a couple of partners, so that if you lost with one, you could jump into a game with another.
From then on time would seem to fly. Cards were shuffled and dealt. You made your bids, won or lost your points all the while keeping your mouth small and your ears big. Even having a euchre partner was no guarantee of safety if you were to vocal and got noticed by any of the older Aunts or God help you Herself. I had one last tactic; I would partner with Herself as often as I could. Not only is Gladys a shark, she does not expect men to be very good at much (matriarchy, remember?). This allows any boy to win her special favor by being competent at something, and that goes doubly for playing euchre.
After an hour or so of card, the Butter Tarts would come out, along with coffee. What are Butter Tarts? They are only the best dessert you will ever have! Butter tarts are small pastries filled with raisins and walnuts and butter. Think pecan pie if the filling were not so thick, not quite so sweet and had raisins and walnuts instead of pecans. Herself is the keeper of this recipe, and no I am is not going to share it with you! These treats were so good people would stash them in cupboards and on shelves to have some for later. Anytime Thanksgiving was held at your house, you might find the odd butter tart for a couple of days afterward.
A huge platter of these delightful treats would be put out, and in about twenty minutes they would all be gone! Sure there was still pumpkin pie, the odd cake or pecan pie hanging around for you to fill up the corners of your stomach with, but the butter tarts were the main dessert.
Then it was back to more cards. They would spin across the table, talk would flow and ebb around the needs of the game. There would be surprise wins and losses. Uncle Ferg and Uncle Michael would tell jokes (always a dangerous time, as some of them were a little racy and could get you bounced downstairs!). All the while, there would be this sense of "us" or "we" in the air. It is the essence of a large family that there will be disagreements, fights and assorted unpleasantness. Still, when we were all together all playing our politics and our schemes we were one, we were family.
If you have never lived this, I am not sure you will get it. There is this feeling of belonging to something big and powerful and sometimes scary which pervades our gatherings. We may be mean to each other, we may have family politics running rampant, but it is inside not outside. We are allowed to be mean to each other, but God and all the angels help the outsider who thinks they can cross a member of our families with impunity.
All of this happens at a subconscious level. The family is there, we are far from perfect but we are one when we celebrate the holidays. It is the meaning of family, for me anyway, to be there at the euchre table, munching on a butter tart and listing to Uncle Tom tell stories. There is a comfort knowing you are part of this, that all of these people have your back.
Eventually it all winds down. The kids get cranky from too much sugar and being hyped up from seeing all their cousins. Those who like to over indulge in wine or beer get hammered and are less fun. The euchre game winds down and it is time to go home. The coats are gathered off the beds, the dishes which were brought are collected and out into the cold November night we would go. Dad would play the radio quietly and all us kids would drift in an out of sleep on the ride home.
Was it perfect? Oh hell no, but it was and is the experience of an extended family. It is experiences like this which have made me the person I am today. The understanding I have about the need for collective action come from these people and these holidays. Here is wishing all of you a happy Thanksgiving and hope for your interactions with your families this holiday to be as important and lasting as they have been for me.
The floor is yours. |
