Coffee Chat: Are We There Yet?

Do come in and sit down.  There's coffee and hot tea if you'd rather have that.  Funny to think that as of January this year I'd never had a cup of hot tea and now I find I crave it. Come mid afternoon when I make John coffee, often as not, I put on the tea pot and heat water for tea for myself.   It puts the chills on the run on these cool days.  It's nice and autumnal out there.  At last.

Are you crazy busy yet with the Thanksgiving prep?  At this point, I just bought  a turkey and it is in the fridge preparing to thaw.  I have a list made out of things to do but the grocery part of the list isn't long.  I've delegated a few things to others.  I'm still trying to figure out how to handle all the sides and the turkey in the oven.  I bought a 20 pound bird.  And that means it will need to cook about 6 and a half hours.  With dinner at 12 or so I'm going to be getting up mighty early to put that stuffing in that bird and get the turkey in the oven.



I've gotten around the mashed potatoes by taking the easy way out.  It shall be instant potatoes.  Not something I typically do but boiling water and warming milk and butter is so much easier than peeling 10 pounds of potatoes, finding pots enough to fit them all and then mashing in batches.  And it will leave me fairly free on Thursday to visit with guests and get that much needed sleep the night before because I HAVE to be up at 5am on Wednesday.   I must share that Sunny Simple Life makes her potatoes well ahead.  She told me that she adds extra milk, above what you'd normally add then puts them in the crockpot the next day with pats of butter on top and let's them heat while everything else is being cooked.  I shared with her that this reminded me of the Mennonite lady's potatoes she brought to dinner for Christmas at the EMS last year.  The potatoes were absolutely delicious and as you put the spoon into them you could see that they'd been layered into the dish with little pats of butter between each layer.  They were awesome.   However, for the sake of ease and because I personally believe that these are totally unnecessary, I'm just making instant and calling that good enough.

I will have three of my four children at home and 6 of the 10 grandchildren here so that is something.  Considering we've had perhaps two Thanksgivings together as a family in all these years I'm not complaining though Amie won't be here... Long ago when both boys were in the Navy, I realized that likely I'd never have all my children together in one place ever again and I'm glad I intuited it way back then.   It's made all these years of missed holidays bearable in a way.  

Last week my Coast Guard son announced he was headed back to Georgia for at least the next six months.  We'll be glad to have him a bit nearer by, so to speak.  Leaves from California duty seem to be few and far between.  He and his children will be here which wasn't expected really.   And Katie's plans changed.  I was happy when I asked if she might come if things changed and she said she would be here. I've heard nothing further from John's brother and wife, am fairly sure one other guest will definitely be here and had one other offer up a " maybe, I don't know" as a reply to my invite.  Sigh.   At this point I just proceed and plan for all and if any doesn't show then at least I'd have had enough if they showed up.

I have thought about guests and where to put them if overnights were needed and let it be known to my oldest son that there are first dibs on the guest room just in case that comes about.  I've tried to think of food beyond the Thanksgiving dinner but that's addled my brain, lol.  I told John that truly it's the very best time to have guests because he is off 5 days at that point and doesn't have a shift.  This whole 24/48 shift work really is harder than you'd think and even more difficult to work family visits around.

I've got lists and then I've got lists, if you know what I mean.  Shopping, notes for requirements for dishes, cooking times, groceries needed, schedules for getting things done, things I want to do in the guest room just in case our out of state relatives make it...So it goes. You'd think as you tick off things, the lists would shorten but they seem to just go on and on.

The execution of dinner isn't going to be a problem I don't think.  It's managing enough food for 18 for a Thanksgiving dinner that makes me a wee bit nervous.  I'm a Southern girl through and through and in the South one generally must have enough food to feed 45 if 20 are expected.  If you think I exaggerate I assure you I am...but not as much as you might think!!  Granny never fixed a Sunday dinner with less than two meats and four vegetables and two salads and two desserts.  And that was a dinner for six...I've been fighting my Southern tendencies for years and so I'm always a smidge uncertain that truly I shall have enough since I don't follow the tradition for mere company dinners.

I've mentally set up tables (adding a leaf to our dining table, moving the sewing table into the dining area to share the space, and the little Disney Princess table and chairs I've just gotten).  I've counted chairs and  with the four folding chairs I shall still  be four short, even if I bring in the two heavy folding chairs from outdoors and the two rolling desk chairs.  I decided to just go ahead and purchase some more folding chairs.   They'll come in handy in the future as well, I'm sure, and they are inexpensive enough I can afford to get them.  

I didn't go get loads of plants but I'd like to have my little area in front of the back porch looking seasonally pretty.   It's cool enough now for Kale and snapdragons and pansies to do really well.  I bought nine packs and will have that area all dressed up in under an hour of time.  I saw the prettiest little pots of maroon dianthus (none of which were to be had in the garden center except in those particular pots) with an Italian Rock Pine in the middle of the pot.  This was a pale blueish green and it was stunning.  I was a bit put out though because not one of those pots nor the Italian Rock Pines that were alone had a price anywhere upon them, nor on the shelf either.   John suggested I just go dig up some of our baby cedar trees which grow in plenty wild here.  After spying one about the size of one I cut down this summer for $10, I decided he might well be right.   Don't know if I'm up to digging out cedars just now but it's a thought for the winter flower pots.

Anyway there's all that sort of planning this week and executing to be done as much as I can.  I'm not worrying but just thinking.

It seems however that no holiday I plan can ever be without some form of drama.  Frankly it's never MY drama but that of others who come with the tag of family.  Anybody have a clue why this must be so?  Yet, here I've already had two such dramas and we've yet to reach the holiday celebration.  It does make me wary with a week to go.

I remember years ago the shocking revelation I came to after yet another horrid holiday gathering.  I was watching a movie on television, weeping a little from the trauma of the family repast behind me, and wondering why my family couldn't be just so...and then I looked hard at the screen and realized that not one of those people on that screen were related, not one of them had history with the other one.  They were PAID to act like a family.  They were PAID to be jolly and cheerful and kind and sweet...and I wondered just what their true family gatherings might be like.  Did the girl who was talking to her pretend sister so lovingly have a quarrel with her real sister that was longstanding?  Did the tension between the two of them cause others to secretly dread family gatherings?  Was one of the male actors a surly nasty person off screen whose family just dreaded gatherings with him included?   Did that mom beaming happily at her brood, actually manipulate and guilt trip her kids and play one off the other in real life?  Yes, I realized that likely that family on the screen was pretty much an illusion and somewhat relaxed my grip on the ideal I'd held for so long that other families were not what mine was.

That said, unless I'm being terribly obtuse, my children seem to get along well enough without overmuch tension between them.  Yes, they have their little quarrels and they have their little intolerances of one another at times and that's okay.   But over all they seem to do well enough in their relationships with their siblings.  They  are all incredibly loyal to one another even while remaining aware of one another's faults.  They love one another, I think.  Quite accidentally this week I discovered that my children have their own group page wherein they chat.  Here's a reason why the modern day technology isn't necessarily a bad thing.  If they had to rely on letters at least two will never write and the other two seldom will write.  Phone calls have their own share of problems in households with toddlers, as we all know.   So to have their own chat group in which they keep up with one another is rather nice, I think, especially given the distances they live away from one another.

I say this because my brother lived within the same property as I for 20 years and we might see one another at Thanksgiving or Christmas  if Mama was hosting.  'Might' being the key word in the previous sentence.  If holiday meals were here at my home, he wouldn't come.   I wasn't invited to visit his home.   If I passed him in the shared portion of the driveway, often as not he'd stare straight ahead and ignore me.   For years, I sent him Christmas and birthday cards, invited him to family dinners, waited in vain for invites when he determined he would have a family dinner, etc.  Our sole contact some years was if he did work for us, hired by John, not myself.

It sounds like we have a long standing feud but no we don't.  Growing up we were very close.   No quarrels, no feuds.  He will plainly state that he has no interest in a relationship, that he just wants to be left alone.  And so it stands.   I finally  accepted that nothing I could do was ever going to change his lack of feeling.    After my dad died and we had to settle up three estates at once, we had to work together and spoke a little more frequently.  At the end we were more polite I suppose if not closer.   Now if he sees me he's likely to speak and on very rare occasions he might stop in for a moment, but mostly no.  That's the only alteration our relationship has seen.  I don't wait on birthday cards or Christmas cards.  I don't expect phone calls or invitations.  I often wonder if when Mama dies he will disappear from my life entirely.  I expect it will be just so.   No, not a movie perfect family.  Not even a 'made for television' family. 

I've long since given up the feeling that I was cheated in my immediate family.  It's true I had all those wonderful older relatives and I felt rooted with them in my life.  But my immediate family...well that was always a hard row to hoe, full of rocks and deeply rooted bitter weeds.

I was thinking the other day about happy, memorable Thanksgivings from my past, if there were any.  I recalled one.   John worked that day I believe, must have, most likely did as there have been so few of those days at home.  It was just Amie and Katie and I here.   I can't recall if we went to Mama's for dinner or if we prepared a meal here.  Amie had only recently moved away from home and had been through some rather scary hard things.  I'd suggested she move back home but she was determined not to return as a failure.  She spent a few nights in her car and a few nights at a Rescue Mission in the city where she worked.  And then she moved in with a co-worker and settled in to work and such.   It had been a hard year for me with worrying for her.  I knew she'd met someone and that he was older than she.  She'd cooked a Thanksgiving meal for him and his children before coming home that morning.  She was 20...Katie was 8.

We had a girly time after dinner.   We painted fingers and toes. We watched a movie, likely Miracle on 34th Street since it's something of a classic for Thanksgiving.  What I remember most aside from Katie's request for Amie to give her a red and green pedicure, lol, was sitting on the back steps of our home.  We didn't have so much as a stoop back then, just a steep set of steps.  Amie and I sat there on the steps and watched the sunset and shivered and snuggled close in the cool air.  I talked to her as I seldom have been able to speak to any of my children.  I reminded her of her upbringing and her own natural rather old fashioned sense of right and wrong.  I told her how I much I loved and how I trusted her to make good in life.  I explained that I too often let my fears guide my advice to her and never did I want to guide my children out of sense of fear.  She told me of her dream of a family of her own and her fears at one point in her awful spell of time.  I felt closer to her than I had in months and months.  We came indoors, shivering, and had cocoa.  It was a good Thanksgiving Day, a memorable one.  I hated to see her drive away.  Little did I know it was one of our last good days for a very long time.   She moved in with that man and took on his children and raised them as her own.  They had children of their own.  I was proud of her willingness to take on the difficult task of raising step children when she was so young yet. 

But we had our share of rocky roads to travel down  in our relationship over the next few years which culminated in her moving to North Dakota.   A misunderstanding started it all, something said by another that she thought was something we'd said,  but it took 15 years for her to tell me what it was that went wrong.  It was truly a misunderstanding.   We'd never said the hurtful thing and the person who said it was repeating someone else's opinion and was too young to understand how very hurtful it was to repeat.    You can't go back and reclaim 15 years of lost time, nor can you cross the years and wipe out the hurt caused on both sides.  But it was at an end at last.  So you see why that particular Thanksgiving stands out so in my memory.  There were few happy days between us for too long to count after that.  For the past ten years she's been in North Dakota and I in Georgia and the distance does not grow shorter in miles but it has, thank God, between our hearts.

And so, as I navigate the minefield of another holiday meal with various and sundry folks and try to not become a nervous wreck over it all, I hold on to the dream that one day, I shall have a perfectly lovely holiday that is filled with nothing but good feelings and love and affection for one another.   Yes, that my holiday shall be picture perfect and worthy of any movie made.  But for now...We are not there yet.