Make
Memories
“Some
memories are unforgettable, remaining ever vivid and heartwarming.”
Joseph B.
Wirthlin
We're preparing to enter
Thanksgiving week here in America. Already the grocery stores are
overrun with folks shopping for hams and turkeys, their carts filled
with bags of cranberries and oranges, pecans and brown sugar. It
occurs to me that it is no coincidence that All Saints Day and
Thanksgiving fall in the same month. Holidays always bring up
memories of the “saints” in our families, both the living and the
dead—the ones we love and the ones we dread. Viewing them from the
perspective of age, I'm not sure which stories I love the most—the
good, the bad, or the ugly.
My mother was a true
traditionalist. Sometimes, it seemed as though she went to the
grocery store and bought one of everything there. There had to be a
turkey, of course, and usually a ham as well, for biscuits, and later
for soup. I remember several turkeys cooked to the point that the
bones fell out. They arrived at the table looking slightly medieval;
just a heap of meat with bones sticking out all around. No need to
slice. Her dressing is still the best I've ever tasted, and I can't
replicate it to save my life. She preferred cooked cranberry
sauce—probably because it was mostly sugar, and she did have
herself a sweet-tooth. She baked for days—pecan pies and chocolate
cakes and those dreadful fruitcake cookies—always thinking that
there needed be variety so that people could pick and choose, or
better yet, have one of each. Forget the fact that everyone was
stuffed to their eyeballs before ever getting to the desserts.
One of my favorite
Thanksgivings occurred toward the end of my father's life. We were
gathered around a loaded table with Ian, who was nine or ten, trying
to tell jokes while Jake made rye comments that all Ian's jokes
required “the willing suspension of disbelief.” We all tried to
replicate the Alabama drawl, “Why, dawlin', would you caah for some
cawn, and perhaps you could send those precious little biscuits this
way.” My dad laughed and laughed. By the next Thanksgiving, he was
gone.
I know the holidays are
stressful for many people. There's a performance quality to them, and
we all have fallen short at one time or another. We often have to rub
shoulders with people we never see otherwise, and never want to see
in the first place. These are the dark “saints” of the family.
They are fingernails on our chalkboards. It sometimes helps to look
at them as players in a larger story—the story of a family with all
the mythic characters. There are heroes and jesters, ladies and
trollops, villains and innocents, soothers and the disturbers. A good
story requires all of them to keep the action moving. It is sometimes
fun to decide ahead of time which of your “saints” might fill
each role. Keep tabs during the meal, take notes. Be sure to wear
Sherlock Holmes' wellingtons and Inverness cape. If nothing else, it
will make everyone slightly anxious about what you're up to. You may
even become their dark saint.
Make some memories this
Thanksgiving. They will sustain you in your dotage—I have that on
very good authority.
In the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment