Tuesday, December 24, 2002

cocktail shaker in the shape of a leg...once a Christmas gift? Now an ebay prize?

"The truth about poeple had not much to do with what they said about themselves, or what others said about them."

Paula Fox, Desperate Charaters, 1970

It is not enough to be h

If you have a big meal and gift exchange and go hear some Christmas music, then Christmas can seem to be completely over with by Christmas day. I like that, in a way, because Christmas Day can be a relaxing day of leftovers and TV and reading books you got for gifts. I always get books for gifts. I'm married to FFP after all.

So there are things to do when I get up. FFP goes and picks up a cake and a smoked turkey with dressing and gravy. So what do you have to do, you ask? My mother-in-law is bringing a Waldorf salad, another fruit salad called ambrosia (canned mandarin oranges, shredded coconut in this one). Tried and true and delicious recipes probably invented to sell walnuts or canned mandarin orange slices or coconut. Be that as it may, good dishes and she will bring them. She's bringing rolls to brown and serve and sweet potato casserole, too.

So, yeah, what do I have to do. Well, first I have to go have a workout. I have to wrap a couple of gifts. (What pleasure to rummage in my now neat wrapping and gift closet for Christmas sacks and tissue to recycle!) I have to make a spinach casserole. I have to steam vegies (yellow squash, zucchini and broccoli) and make a casserole out of that with a little Parmesan cheese and some fresh rosemary and spices. I have to sauté mushrooms. (Because surely we have to have some actual vegetables.) I have to heat the turkey and gravy and dressing. I have to get it all hot at once including my mother-in-law's sweet potatoes. I have to clean up the messes made by the stages of this activity...mixing bowls, pots. I have to set the table, finding the table cloth and napkins. I have to talk my dad into carving the turkey. So...even though I made so little of the meal I am exhausted when we eat it. I have two plates. The first with a bit of everything, the next just some more spinach and vegies and turkey and dressing and gravy.

Then, of course, I have to wash the china and silver and more pots and pans and put all the leftovers (some of everything) in the frig. I have to do this with my mother-in-law helping. While she does help, drying dishes, she is constantly asking me about things...where are the dish towels?, what is that lotion up there? and commenting on all the dishes and such. She's enjoying it (she doesn't get out much and is, at heart, rather nosey about things she things she understands like kitchenware) and the men are bringing in dirty dishes but, truth be told, I'd finish faster by myself. ("Don't put the dirty dishes on the clean dishes!" "Just set it down, I'll put it away!" "Just leave it until I get to it!" I want to say.) But I manage not to get upset with anyone and everything gets clean but the three Riedel wine glasses ("I'll wash them when I'm sober") and a few things that I stick in the dishwasher. We've picked up the detritus of gift-giving, too. Each person using the gift sacks for arranging their gifts. My mother-in-law is glad to get the sacks for recycling next year (the sacks I've recycled this year...pasting print outs of vintage Christmas postcards from ebay over some places where people wrote on bags with markers, ripping off come-with tags on bags with prior To/From and tying on a tag of my own making).

So everything is over, never happened. FFP starts watching a production from Covent Garden of The Nutcracker and finally puts a tape in. He takes his parents home and we arrange to have leftover lunch tomorrow and he comes back and picks up Dad and I and we go to Four Seasons.

Rebecca has invited lots of people down for sing-along. We stay until 10:30 or so but it never gets festive for me. Dad asks for 'Danny Boy' and William Parker sings it. I ask for 'For All We Know.' Well, yes, it's hard to get festive if you keep asking for funereal songs. It's hard. Sad songs make you feel sad. But sad in a good way.

Yep, I missed Mom. I couldn't bring myself to start a jigsaw puzzle, no one wanted to play a game. She wasn't in the kitchen helping me with her years of experience. Yep she used to make the entire turkey dinner for hoards. No buying something already cooked. She wasn't there with her homemade rolls and her Christmas sweater, maybe Christmas socks and Christmas earrings. At her place at the table, I put the rolls (store-bought and browned with a brush of butter on top) and butter. There was a time when those rolls would have been homemade and a time before that when the butter would have been made by my mother, too. I don't really fell nostalgic, though. Just a little lost.

JUST TYPING
We think the holiday requires a large meal with many dishes.
I hide in this need, pretending that we need a large turkey and eight side dishes, good china, good wine.
Giving myself things to wash and dishes to put away.
Giving some purpose.