normally i write about my complaints, thoughts and daily drivel, today i thought i'd do something a little different. Last weekend was the Canadian Thanksgiving which let's be honest has nothing to do with giving thanks to dudes with beards and ladies who were forced to have over ten children to tend to the farm tasks; but everything to do with spending time with the 'dreaded' family and eating way too much fatty food but blaming it on the fact that you had to celebrate the day. Everyone forgives the consumption of pumpkin pie and two servings of ice cream with a dollop of whip cream on thanksgiving; it's a free pass to be a glutton.
anyway - instead i've decided to put a bit of a short story about those family dinners. Cheers and have some pie.
Plastic Plates
I’m from what other people might call a broken family. I’ve never thought of it as failed relationship, just reconfigured; or as me and my siblings like to say new and improved; more zing less sting.
My mom got the house that increased in value almost ten fold since the time of purchase, the family dog, and the remnant children still young enough to be lurking around home and Christmas, Easter and birthdays. My dad got the house in the country and Thanksgiving. That was fifteen years ago; now the dog is sitting on the mantle, the last child is threatening to move out, and the boyfriend has moved in. Birthdays are hit and miss, Christmas tends to find a few of us in warmer places, and my dad still has Thanksgiving, and says he needs a girlfriend like he needs a hole in his head.
Meal time for my family when I was growing up was generally about three things; talking, what was for dinner and how quickly you could eat it. With five children, two boys with ogre proportion appetites and a mother who seems to this day to be proportionally challenged eating fast was of the utmost importance because if you didn’t eat fast enough you might not get enough or you might not get any, if Duncan or Fraser beat you to it. We all still eat too fast, it’s a family shortcoming. I can finish a full plate in under three minutes without even trying.
Now that we’re all pretending to be grown ups we share plate time far less often, it comes down to occasional birthday dinners and holidays. Someone is always on some kind of food kick, no protein, only protein, no carbs, low fat, raw food, but you leave any restrictions at the door of my father’s 140 year country house come the season of thanks. He won’t put up with our nonsense because he only gets us all for one full day a year, and we don’t bother because we know how much it means.
The house is cluttered with Victorian furniture, model trains, paintings, and one ghost; my great grandfather. But he’s only made an appearance twice when Dad’s opened the holiday scotch, he won’t come out for anything aged less than twelve years. If you don’t eat something you are served at my father’s house he won’t give you a polite smile of understanding. He’ll probably call you a wimp and then my brother will kick your shin or worse cut your portion of ice cream. If you don’t eat the meat he might mention Hitler was a vegetarian, he’s not being funny when he says it. We welcome anyone and everyone to these dinners. We’ve had girlfriends, boyfriends, co-workers, neighbors; and the odd stray; they all arrive slightly scared but they’ll leave laughing or at least slightly drunk. We like to talk, argue and occasionally yell.
Martha Stewart, my dead grandmother and any other person of epicurean and hospitable background would look at our thanksgiving dinner table and probably run in horror, but I adore it because it isn’t strewn with colorful gourds or vanilla scented candles, instead it is a rough hewn table littered with paper plates, and a table cloth from Sally Ann so we can throw it away and not feel obligated to wash it. The chairs are a mish mash collected from a variety of rooms, your lucky if all four legs hit the floor.
We arrive at eight in the morning in two or three cars from the City. We are carrying the basics that Dad might not have on hand because mostly he has the single man’s diet of macaroni and cheese, canned soup and his favorite peanut butter sandwiches and popcorn popped with far too much oil, and two packs of smokes a day. He says he’d quit but he likes them too much. We’re often amazed he’s still alive, he assures us his health is due entirely to the fact that he avoids doctors like the plague.
Then we squeeze into cars and drive to Stratford to the local farmers market. Dad smokes his cigarettes and chats to the merchants; he knows many by name. They are local farmers or Mennonite families and you can’t buy anything without exchanging dialogue. The lady who makes the cheese bread is pregnant with her eleventh, I wonder aloud how she does it and she says with the help of the older three. I’m glad I’m not a Mennonite. I battle with my two.
The women spend the first few minutes watching the men stuff as many pork on a bun as they can into their mouths before they hit the doughnut stand. We pick a turkey, buy a pound of fresh bacon to cover it with, fresh fruit and vegetables. My father will make an apple pie, he’s always made better ones than my mom, but for him it is really about the old cheddar he lays on the top, from the local cheese maker. We joke he has a little pie with his cheese every year.
Then with already full bellies we rush back to the house, we must get the turkey in the oven or we’ll be eating at midnight. I do the turkey, while my older sister tells me I’m doing it wrong. I ask again why her boyfriend of twenty years isn’t here, yet again. We laugh, oh right it’s because he doesn’t enjoy family things. She corrects the layering of the bacon and adds butter to the top and extra salt. She ignores my arms crossed against my chest. I think maybe it’s time to open a bottle of wine.
We decided a few years ago we didn’t want to use glass plates for two reasons, mostly because it meant extra work and secondly because none of us care enough about how things look to make it worth the effort. We love the process of the day and this is our father’s time to have us, his holiday. We want to spend the entire day talking about the time I walked in on my brother going down on his girlfriend and I didn’t even pause to be shocked. I told him it was dinner time and he smiled from between her legs telling me he’d already eaten. She had screamed and I had laughed, run down the stairs and announced it to the entire family. Then there was the meal when I was nine. My little brother had come down five minutes late for his favorite; spaghetti with meat sauce. He was three and he sat at the table and said, “I didn’t do it.”
Which made my father fly up the stairs in an absolute flurry of adult radar. Not forty seconds later he yelled, “I need water.” My mother handed my big sister a mug of water and sent her up to Dad. She came screaming down the stairs a minute later and said, “Mom I think he needs more water, there are six foot flames on Amanda’s bed.”
We lost the third floor that night, my bed was the first thing to burn, and soon after me and my sister’s room with the help of the firemen’s axes became an open air porch. I think it’s telling that the only one who didn’t finish dinner that night was my father. It takes a lot to put us off our food.
We start to prepare the salad, the wine is flowing. Duncan is telling us who he is dating this week, will he ever settle down? Maybe the new girl is tough enough. Fraser is calling him a liar while my younger sister shakes her head and wonders aloud how he can be so emotionally ruthless, but we know she’s green, she’s only had one boyfriend, who none of us like. My children are feeding their puppy from the table and I’m trying not to laugh while my father asks if anyone else wants some extra gravy. He’s forgotten I don’t eat meat again, or more likely he just doesn’t care.
We tell the same stories, with some new ones. How I got too drunk and took off all my clothes after a birthday dinner. Every one tells their version of just how pathetic I was. I have a new story to add, we have recently moved back from South Africa and we often had people over for braais, their word for barbecue. I am not religious, but many of our friends there were. One night one of our guests says he’d like to say grace. We nod our approval and away he goes. He thanks god for the chicken and the sausage and the potatoes and the cake, says Amen and raises his head. My little daughter, three at the time looks this strange man dead in the eye and says, “Why did you thank God for the chicken I saw my mom make it.”
And you see Dagny has it right, she’s already got the gift of the gab. She’ll fit in just fine. It’s not the food, the dishes, the centerpieces or the preparation. It’s about finding out your big sister might be getting married soon while you peel carrots, or telling a dirty secret as you clear the table, or agreeing that mom really did let the boys do anything, while you stir the gravy, and watching your little brother fall in love with the new stranger, while you dry the dishes.
We get a garbage bag and collect the tattered and stained plates, we wipe down the countertops and roll up the table cloth, Dad says he might keep it, he likes the pattern. We finish by drying the wine glasses and then we all move out to the porch, my father smokes a cigarette while me and the girls throw a stick around for the puppy. Dad settles back in his chair and puts his cigarette down, we gather round. My husband gives me the look that says he’s ready to leave. But, it’s Dad’s time to tell a story.
When he’s done, we hug, lie that we’ll see him soon and lug all our stuff back into the cars. Driving home we’re still reminiscing, once again we’ve remembered why we’re okay even though our family is broken.
