Vick's View

Very Thankful

Posted

It was chaos. Absolute mayhem. Skeletal remains of a turkey and ham were everywhere. It looked like a tornado had touched down on my dining room table.

It was Thanksgiving.

My family is made-up of carnivores. Serious carnivores. They take their meat very seriously. So in preparation, I cooked a 10 pound Turkey and a 10 pound ham. There were only ten of us: six adults, one adolescent, two toddlers, and an infant. Together we consumed at that one meal 20 pounds of meat, 10 pounds of dressing, 2 pounds of cranberry sauce, a quart of gravy, 10 pounds of Mac and cheese, two huge green bean casseroles, 20 pounds of sweet potatoes, a 15 person birthday cake, 5 pounds of cherry cobbler, and 1/2 gallon of ice cream.

At one point I just sat and looked around. The nine-month-old infant was demanding food by banging on his highchair. He only stopped when food entered his mouth. It was rather rhythmic, like drums along the Mohawk.

We were celebrating Jay’s birthday; he was turning 3 years old in just a few days. While trying to take pictures, he decided to lean over and stick his entire face in the cake. So there was clean up on aisle one as we rushed to get him spruced up just long enough to take a family picture. We sat him down at his little table with his 2 1/2-year-old cousin Ketch. While Ketch stuffed his cheeks full of meat, Jay, who is a picky eater, a true oddity in this family, proceeded to feed grapes to our Chihuahua.

Do you know what grapes do to the stomach of a Chihuahua? No, I don’t think you do. I had to get out the Pepto Bismol and buy a new rug.

My daughter-in-law proceeded to yell at Ketch to take all the meat out of his mouth and chew one piece at a time. An order he completely ignored. He looked like a little chipmunk sitting there with his blonde hair, blue eyes, and cheeks packed as full as they possibly could be. I looked at my son at the end of the table who was watching a football game on his cell phone and trying to get the gravy out of his beard.

Both of my daughters in law were chatting across the table about the ins and outs of motherhood, while my other son leaned back in his chair patting his full belly, and saying he was too full to eat another bite. But then he ate another bite.

My granddaughter was sitting beside me, and she kept trying to get up and boss the two little ones. I looked over at my husband who just kept his head down and shoveled in food as fast as he could. Frankly, after cooking for three days I was too tired to eat. Besides, there was enough entertainment around the table.

With the baby banging his little hands on the tray of his highchair, the roar of the game fans on the phone, the clatter of knives and forks, my sons carrying on intermittent conversations across the opposite ends of the table, and the TV blaring a Christmas movie, it looked like a circus. The raucous noise was mind boggling. It didn’t help that as a grandma I thought it would be cute to buy punch balloons for the children to play with. But my sons had more fun than the children, and they walked around with the rubber bands at the ends of the big, tough, thick balloons and punched them over and over and over. And over and over and over. And over and over and over. Bam, bam, bam, bam in rapid staccato. I almost lost my mind.

Finally, dinner was over, everything was cleaned up, I sat down to rest, and it seemed like a matter of seconds when everyone was ready for leftovers. So it all started over again. The mess and the madness.

And just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I tripped over one of the kids’ toys and fell. I fell on the same hip I had replaced. I must say, I have a lot of appreciation for titanium balls and rods. Nothing broke, nothing dented, but my hip was colored in lovely hues of blue and purple the next day.

Eventually, there was no food left. The families gathered their belongings, hugged each other goodbye, waddled their way to the cars, and waved as they drove away. My husband and I turned and looked at each other. We grinned, high fived each other, and dragged our weary bodies into the house. He took the couch, and I took the recliner. We didn’t get up for two days.

It was tough, it was chaos, and it was messy. But I wouldn’t have had it any other way.