"This year my mother put in the pudding a toenail."
My sister would roar with laughter. My mother was suitably disgusted. My father usually wasn't paying much attention. He had the paper folded on the table so that a crossword puzzle or the word jumble was visible.
My mother always cooked a wonderful Thanksgiving meal, except as she got older she started burning the turkey because "undercooked turkey will give you worms." My wife, Christine, loves to cook. She tried to jump in and help out, but my mother always regarded everyone as incompetent. After five years Christine hadn't made it past preparing a few minor vegetables as the main course was deemed out of her range of cooking ability. So my wife would whip out the corn and beat potatoes into a mash while my mother roasted the turkey into a tiny, dried, dense ball of chalk.
My mother had a lot of good traits. She was an accomplished artist and could be very helpful when you needed to know how to do something like remove a stain from a porcelain sink or sew a complicated stitch. I always found my mother to be a little like the female lead in a Rogers and Hammerstein musical, one part dingbat, two parts well meaning. She had friends who were just like her. They all mostly stayed at home, inside. Women from the 1950's kept their worlds well organized. They never wore jeans, preferring polyester pantsuits. They had "house coats." They talked incessantly, rarely absorbing anything anyone said. In my youth I learned not to bother to tell my mother what was going on in my life. I once confided in her about something that was troubling me when she tilted her head back to look through her bifocals. I knew she wasn't paying any attention to my lamentations, but I continued with my story anyway. When I finished, she said,
"How long have you had that blackhead on your nose?'
I just explained how I was struggling with a stressful situation, and my mother's sage advice involved when to pop a zit. What do you expect from a generation who slept in separate beds by age fifty?
For my entire life, I've hated lima beans. Some people have tried to convince me that they were just not prepared correctly, but it's not that. I hate them. Every Thanksgiving for decades my mother made lima beans, and when she noticed I didn't have any on my plate she inevitably commanded,
"Have some lima beans.""I don't like them," I answered.
She asked incredulously as if this was new information,
"You want corn?" my mother asked.
My father looked up, grabbed his pencil and said, "That's easy. Dick."
Then the heat came on and the baseboard hot water radiators began to expand. My mother issued,
"We need to get the water out of those pipes."
"It's a baseboard hot water system. It's supposed to have water in it," I explained.
"There has never been water in those pipes," she insisted.
I had a four year college degree in mechanical engineering and a masters in the same that I earned all with high honors, but somehow my mother never thought I knew what I was talking about when it came to a forced hot water system. It probably didn't matter much had I explained that if air was in those diminutive copper pipes, there wouldn't be enough mass to transfer sufficient energy to heat the house. Then my mother asked,
"Aren't you gonna have some corn?"
"I had corn, and I ate it," I answered.
"The sink in the kitchen is leaking," she then announced.
She asked incredulously as if this was new information,
"You don't like lima beans?"
"No, I don't. Going on forty years now."
Lima beans weren't the only vegetable that was an issue. Corn caused a lot of problems too. I like corn, but only so much. On Thanksgiving we loaded up our plates, then we all pretended like we were religious by reciting some immutable, incantation of a prayer, approved by the Second Vatican Council. I learned not to eat all my corn on my plate, but instead to leave a few kernels behind. My father picked up the newspaper looking for a four letter word that began with "d" for "opposite of Jane."
"No, I don't. Going on forty years now."
Lima beans weren't the only vegetable that was an issue. Corn caused a lot of problems too. I like corn, but only so much. On Thanksgiving we loaded up our plates, then we all pretended like we were religious by reciting some immutable, incantation of a prayer, approved by the Second Vatican Council. I learned not to eat all my corn on my plate, but instead to leave a few kernels behind. My father picked up the newspaper looking for a four letter word that began with "d" for "opposite of Jane."
"You want corn?" my mother asked.
"I had some," I answered.
My father looked up, grabbed his pencil and said, "That's easy. Dick."
Then the heat came on and the baseboard hot water radiators began to expand. My mother issued,
"We need to get the water out of those pipes."
"It's a baseboard hot water system. It's supposed to have water in it," I explained.
"There has never been water in those pipes," she insisted.
I had a four year college degree in mechanical engineering and a masters in the same that I earned all with high honors, but somehow my mother never thought I knew what I was talking about when it came to a forced hot water system. It probably didn't matter much had I explained that if air was in those diminutive copper pipes, there wouldn't be enough mass to transfer sufficient energy to heat the house. Then my mother asked,
"Aren't you gonna have some corn?"
"I had corn, and I ate it," I answered.
"The sink in the kitchen is leaking," she then announced.
Every Thanksgiving since 1994 I had to sit through the Kitchen Sink Affair which happened in the summer of that year. On a warm day in July my mother had lifted the handle to the kitchen faucet to turn on the water. It broke off in her hand. Water shot to the ceiling. I dove under the cabinet for the shutoff value. It was behind a can of Easy-Off and a slew of products to remove pet odors. My mother was in a complete disarray. She sat in a rocking chair with the faucet handle still in hand and shouted profanity at the people who built her house in 1951.
Earlier that year she had called her plumber, Tony, to fix a drip in her kitchen sink. Tony, being the master plumber from the old country, replaced the stem in her sink with one that didn't fit correctly. You had to push up on the handle unusually hard to get it to work. Eventually the mechanism broke which led to the Fountain of Trevi in my mother's kitchen.
After inspecting the faucet I said, "This can't be the right stem."
"Tony knows what he's doing!" my mother exclaimed.
Christine is also a mechanical engineer with a masters specializing in thermodynamics. She looked the faucet over as well. Being a more diplomatic problem solver, she focused less on who did what and more on the task at hand.
"Let's go to Home Depot and get a whole new faucet," Christine declared.
She's smart like that. This wasn't a court of law in which blame was to be assigned. She just wanted to fix the faucet. So off we went. When we jumped into the car, Christine said,
"Don't say it."
We purchased a chrome faucet and hoses and installed it in under an hour. It worked beautifully. Shortly afterwards my mother had the faucet inspected by Tony the Plumber, and every Thanksgiving thereafter the story surfaced over dinner. Often she started with,
"Remember that faucet you installed?"
How could I forget the outpouring of gratitude?
"Well, I had Tony look at it, and he said that you installed the wrong stem."
"I installed the whole faucet. The stem was the one that came with it."
"No, Tony had to installed the right one," she insisted.
"And it leaks now right?"
"That's because you don't know what you're doing. Just like the baseboard."
"It didn't leak after we put it in," I professed.
"If you had put the right one in the first place, it would've never leaked!"
My father stirred as I mused that he was looking for a seven letter word that begins with "a" for "unpleasant person." My mother had no need for logic. She just pushed through life espousing her baseless assertions as facts. She was a free thinker in that she didn't let not knowing what she was talking about stop her from expressing her opinions. She never let faith in good intentions lead her astray as she recalled the sordid side of any story. She looked to my plate.
"Have some corn."
"I've had some corn. I don't want anymore. If I did, I would just get some more corn," I said in an overtly condescending tone.
I got up to use the bathroom before my head boiled off like the turkey. When I returned, my mother asked,
"Did you jiggle the handle?"
"What handle?"
Earlier that year she had called her plumber, Tony, to fix a drip in her kitchen sink. Tony, being the master plumber from the old country, replaced the stem in her sink with one that didn't fit correctly. You had to push up on the handle unusually hard to get it to work. Eventually the mechanism broke which led to the Fountain of Trevi in my mother's kitchen.
After inspecting the faucet I said, "This can't be the right stem."
"Tony knows what he's doing!" my mother exclaimed.
Christine is also a mechanical engineer with a masters specializing in thermodynamics. She looked the faucet over as well. Being a more diplomatic problem solver, she focused less on who did what and more on the task at hand.
"Let's go to Home Depot and get a whole new faucet," Christine declared.
She's smart like that. This wasn't a court of law in which blame was to be assigned. She just wanted to fix the faucet. So off we went. When we jumped into the car, Christine said,
"Don't say it."
We purchased a chrome faucet and hoses and installed it in under an hour. It worked beautifully. Shortly afterwards my mother had the faucet inspected by Tony the Plumber, and every Thanksgiving thereafter the story surfaced over dinner. Often she started with,
"Remember that faucet you installed?"
How could I forget the outpouring of gratitude?
"Well, I had Tony look at it, and he said that you installed the wrong stem."
"I installed the whole faucet. The stem was the one that came with it."
"No, Tony had to installed the right one," she insisted.
"And it leaks now right?"
"That's because you don't know what you're doing. Just like the baseboard."
"It didn't leak after we put it in," I professed.
"If you had put the right one in the first place, it would've never leaked!"
My father stirred as I mused that he was looking for a seven letter word that begins with "a" for "unpleasant person." My mother had no need for logic. She just pushed through life espousing her baseless assertions as facts. She was a free thinker in that she didn't let not knowing what she was talking about stop her from expressing her opinions. She never let faith in good intentions lead her astray as she recalled the sordid side of any story. She looked to my plate.
"I've had some corn. I don't want anymore. If I did, I would just get some more corn," I said in an overtly condescending tone.
I got up to use the bathroom before my head boiled off like the turkey. When I returned, my mother asked,
"Did you jiggle the handle?"
"What handle?"
"The toilet!" she shouted, "You need to jiggle the handle or the toilet will keep running. I thought you were an engineer?"
"We should replace the valve," Christine chimed.
"Home Depot is closed on Thanksgiving," I gladly offered.
"Tony will to do it. He knows what he's doing," my mother said.
Sure he does. Tony installed a used stem in my mother's kitchen sink which eventually broke, then he pulled out the guts to the faucet I installed and replaced it with another old stem that he just yanked out of someone else's house. I'm sure he was waiting for another call from my mother to fix her kitchen sink yet again. The wind rattled the old single pane storm windows.
"I need to get NewPro windows for the whole house."
My mother had one window replaced in the family room with a NewPro window. She called them incessantly about every little issue including a spot on the outside. Their lifetime warrantee came to an end shortly after a year.
"They're guaranteed for life, you know," she said.
"Or a year, which ever comes first," I added.
My mother looked about the table then asked, "You want some corn?"
As I stirred, I caught a glimpse of Christine communicating the nonverbal message,
"Don't say it."
I looked to my mother then my father who I assumed just got a seven letter word that began with "f" and ended with "g" which I wanted to use to describe the corn. Christine reached over and scooped a small pile of corn onto my plate. My father mumbled as he peered at the paper in the low light,
"Five letters, ends in 's' for 'fermented mare's milk.'"
"Kumis," Christine offered.
"That fits," my father exclaimed as he eagerly scrawled the word down.
When dessert was served, I drew the almond from the indian pudding. I buried it in the remains of my corn. We left shortly afterwards. Everyone hugged like we were a close family, but the reality was we were as close as we were religious. On the drive home I asked Christine,
"Why did you put that corn on my plate?"
"Because I'm sure it tasted better than your tongue," she answered.
More recently at our house we started a tradition on Thanksgiving to go around the dinner table and say what we are thankful for. Often the answers from younger family and friends involve gratitude for the support they received from their parents. I usually say something about my wife and our two boys then fan out from there to relatives and friends. Often I'm thinking of how lucky I am to be part of such a loving family given my experiences in my youth. People exposed to terrible things like drugs, physical abuse or racism often perpetuate the worst aspects of their upbringing. On Thanksgiving I'm thankful for not what I experienced but for what I avoided.
Come to think of it, I'm thankful of that everyday.
"Tony will to do it. He knows what he's doing," my mother said.
Sure he does. Tony installed a used stem in my mother's kitchen sink which eventually broke, then he pulled out the guts to the faucet I installed and replaced it with another old stem that he just yanked out of someone else's house. I'm sure he was waiting for another call from my mother to fix her kitchen sink yet again. The wind rattled the old single pane storm windows.
"I need to get NewPro windows for the whole house."
My mother had one window replaced in the family room with a NewPro window. She called them incessantly about every little issue including a spot on the outside. Their lifetime warrantee came to an end shortly after a year.
"They're guaranteed for life, you know," she said.
"Or a year, which ever comes first," I added.
My mother looked about the table then asked, "You want some corn?"
As I stirred, I caught a glimpse of Christine communicating the nonverbal message,"Don't say it."
I looked to my mother then my father who I assumed just got a seven letter word that began with "f" and ended with "g" which I wanted to use to describe the corn. Christine reached over and scooped a small pile of corn onto my plate. My father mumbled as he peered at the paper in the low light,
"Five letters, ends in 's' for 'fermented mare's milk.'"
"Kumis," Christine offered.
"That fits," my father exclaimed as he eagerly scrawled the word down.
"Why did you put that corn on my plate?"
"Because I'm sure it tasted better than your tongue," she answered.
More recently at our house we started a tradition on Thanksgiving to go around the dinner table and say what we are thankful for. Often the answers from younger family and friends involve gratitude for the support they received from their parents. I usually say something about my wife and our two boys then fan out from there to relatives and friends. Often I'm thinking of how lucky I am to be part of such a loving family given my experiences in my youth. People exposed to terrible things like drugs, physical abuse or racism often perpetuate the worst aspects of their upbringing. On Thanksgiving I'm thankful for not what I experienced but for what I avoided.
Come to think of it, I'm thankful of that everyday.
No comments:
Post a Comment