The nerve wracking commenced with the lead in to the Thanksgiving meal. The dining room table, which had become Mom's repository of mysterious things, disgorged its contents with painful grimacing. Mostly mine. Piles of papers, random bits of advertising and magazines yet to be read, random plastic bags filled with random art supplies and no where to go with it all.
After a couple of hours the table was clear, leaves inserted and then we started on the china cabinet and buffet. The buffet spent most of the year burdened under piles of sorted paper assortments. Some might call it ephemera. Some might call it junk. I tended to think of it as litter. But for the holidays it was litter free. But only after hours of haranguing sorting. I imagined we looked like a deranged post office. Then the polishing began.
After the dining room smelled like lemony Pledge the table wore an Irish lace cloth and glimmered with the reflected light of china service for 12. Round by round, we filled each place at the table, dinner plate, bread plate, saucer, tea cup, milk glasses. Then the napkin round followed by knife, fork and spoon. The buffet got dressed in fancy place mats and serving pieces.
The egg plate, cut crystal divided relish tray for the jellied cranberries, gravy boat and ladle, ceramic bowls with sculpted green lettuce leaves and red radishes, and the relish tray to beat all relish trays... the ceramic turkey tray from Italy. it was a three quarter-view of a fully ruffled gobbler complete with wattle and comb. The head and neck sections held olives and dill pickles. The body was divided into sections that held the red spiced apple rings, crab apples and slices of pickled beets. The tail feathers contained the piles of sweet butter chips that I loved. Sitting on the buffet in its natural painted colors, I always thought the turkey tray was the prettiest of mom's novelty pieces. Covered in food, it was a garish display of the only excess in our poor family's rituals... an abundance of brined and pickled foods.
The room sat ready for company for two days before the actual meal. No loitering or lingering. No gazing on the sparkling china and fingering of textures in the sculpted bowls. And while the dining room glistened, the kitchen bubbled and brewed the courses of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. The rest of the house remained a shambles until the last minute. During the days before the main meal my anxiety levels would steadily rise to a fevered pitch so that right before the meal, as the final touches were laid, I was shaking and dropping things. My stomach was in knots.
We'd get through the meal without incident; Gramma's conversation kept me calm. Then everything we had done to set the table was done in reverse. Piles of dishes took hours to wash. The worst one held the Scalloped corn. Deliciously crusty and caramelized in the baking process, the edges of scallop corn were Heaven to eat. All good things have their price though. And in the wee hours of the evening, well passed our bed-times everything was bare again.
Then the day after Thanksgiving came. Early in the morning we dressed, went and got a tree, watched Dad struggle to even it out and get it to stand up in the watering tray without tipping while Mom opened up the closet in the living room, our own Area 51 warehouse. Dozens of boxes of ornaments and poseable figures filled the couches. we were expected to watch cartoons and stay out of mom's way but there was no where to sit. The tree came in, lights went on with cursing and the decorating began. This is when Dad took off to do his Dad thing.
Mom's order of reasoning started with bulbs as big as a child's head. But only she could put them up. As the story went, those hand painted German ornaments (4 rounds and 4 pointed oblongs, she kept an inventory in her head) had come with Gramma Ada all the way from Germany at her immigration. Truth is that they were created in Germany but sold at the Kresge's store in Dearborn. They came north when the grandparents emigrated from Detroit. Then the mid-sized bulbs with the indentations and the glitter reindeer and nativity scenes. Then the school-made ornaments. Then the silver tinsel. And no touching.
For the rest of November and most of December came the intensive season of baking and shopping. The grocery store trips lasted well into dark and we would be up late baking cookies, ornaments and quick breads. Mom took the frozen pumpkin out and we made the famous pumpkin bread along with the traditional cranberry orange and banana nut. Then the weekend shopping trip that seemed to last for months.
We each took a turn through the store, choosing and debating, accepting and vetoing during our turn while the other two waited with dad somewhere out of the way. It was hot, sweaty work. Navigating the moms and kids with the carts and trying to make decisions... that was the hard part. I wanted to pick based on happy factor. But I was always told to look at the price first. After so much vetoing, I gave up and wandered around in a sweaty daze, melting in my snowsuit even though it was pulled down to my waist. once we braved the checkout and grumpy over perfumed cashiers it was time to go home. Here we each took a turn in the kitchen to wrap presents.
Talk about a production. Mom was very meticulous about making accurate folds, sharp creases and finding the right bow to finish the package. Curling ribbon or that layered bow that looked like dahlias were only two options. As we were older an ornament hung in lieu of a gift tag. It was an arduous process which built tension and excitement in layers like a Hitchcock film. Then it was time to hide things. Yeah right. Hiding things failed to take anyone's mind off the coming deluge of torn and tattered paper. So a few days of whining and out come the craft projects.
The table, mostly cleared from Thanksgiving, became the art table. And the chaos commenced. One year we made four paste Santa ornaments and painted them with various cheap nail polish enamels with flashy sequins for facial features and hat decor. Another year it was styro-foam cup bells with rickrack and sequins. Another year we did the12 days of Christmas salt dough ornaments and painted those in enamel too. It would take hours to get through these projects because once we started we didn't want to stop. For me, it was enjoyment in the process. you make a couple and figure out how to crank them out. And crankin out ornaments meant that you had a whole set... like boxes in the stores. And I like balance. And I like excess on the tree. So when everyone else was bored we were done.
Then we went back to pestering mom about the presents. When are they going under the tree? When are gramma and grandpa coming over? When are we getting their presents? When are we going over there? When are we opening presents? Can't we open one before church? Can't we put them under the tree so that it looks pretty? Look at this picture.... they have their presents under the tree.
All that build up to Christmas morning. Hours and days and weeks of preparation. It ended in a 30 minute hail storm of bows and a tornado of torn paper and three over-stuffed children waiting to puke. But inevitably only one of us did. Me. And the rest of the day was done in the ebb and flow of cold sweats,trips to the bathroom to fill the bowl and some jello and ginger ale while everyone else was polishing off the deviled eggs and candied crab apples. And that was long before the year of the gingerbread house.
No comments:
Post a Comment