Thanksgiving

I hated Thanksgiving. I would start to get sick to my stomach two weeks before. I dreaded going home. I would arrive by 8 am and my mother would already be working alone in the kitchen. I usually brought the pumpkin pies. I used my mother's recipe and the trick was to strain the pumpkin custard before baking. Bui my mother wasn't pleased with my effort. "You didn't make Lemon Meringue"? She would drop everything and begin to make a lemon pie leaving me to continue fixing the dinner while constantly correcting me without ever thanking me.  I set the table. I would start to pull out goodies from the refrigerator but my mother would stop me. "You can't use that. It's Carol's." "What, she's eating but she doesn't contribute?" I pulled it out anyway. My mother would hurriedly grab it and put it back. Although my older sister wasn't employed so she had to buy her treats with someone else's money, she wasn't willing to share with someone else. 

My mother and I would  get the food ready and call everyone that dinner was ready. My brother and dad would come in and take their place at the table. And then we sat and waited while the food got cold. My mother would call upstairs for my sister. Call. And then call. And then call again. Finally my sister would make a grand entrance as if she were the Queen of England.. The first words out of her mouth were, "Oh, mother, you are so stupid. You forgot the salt and pepper." My mother would apologize and jump up and go get the salt and pepper. I would mouth off to my older sister, "your leg's broken?"

Then Carol would find fault with every dish served. The turkey was too dry, the dressing too moist, the green beans too stringy. And she would eat so slowly - so deliberately. The rest of us would be done and we had to sit and sit and sit, waiting for her to finish. And she insisted on lemon meringue pie which I did NOT make. Her birthday fell on Thanksgiving every so many years. And since it was her birthday, she got lemon meringue pie. Of course, my birthday fell on Easter and my mother always said the same thing, "Since your birthday falls on a holiday, there's no reason to add another celebration, so we'll just skip it." The birthday, not the holiday. But we never skipped Carol's.

After Carol finally finished eating, she would get up and prance to the living room, turn on the TV and watch football game after football game after football game. Nobody else in the family was allowed to touch the TV set and no one else in the family liked football not even my dad. My mother and I cleared the table and washed the dishes. It never failed. When we were finally done and the last dish was put away and my mother and I hung up the towels, my dad came in and said, "I'm hungry. Is there anything to eat?" My mother would get sooooooooo mad.

I could never understand all the emphasis on left-over recipes. It was so rare for us kids to have meat that we just ripped that poor turkey to shreds. We just opened up the refrigerator and shoved it in our mouths.

Christmas wasn't much better. I didn't like surprises so I always hunted and peaked. Again Carol would be the last one in as everyone waited. She would slowly unwrap her presents. I just tore into mine. Carol would always ask for something absurdly rare and she would get it! I would ask for something common, simple, readily available. I would even find an ad or catalogue page for something at Sears. And every time my mother said she looked but couldn't find it. My mother couldn't find Sears? She'd then present my sister with something rare and list all the places, many outside Grand Rapids, where she had looked. My sister would hide a present and when we were all done and my mother would say, "Let's go get breakfast" my sister would slyly pull out her hidden present and say, "I have one more."

How I dreaded the Holidays. Finally I figured out I could stay and socialize for two hours, max, and then I got the Hell out.

From Article: essays

From Heading: Personal Background

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Last modified: 08/05/11