My Momma prolly wishes I’d quit posting this every year. But I can’t stop. It’s like watching Christmas Vacation… It’s always fun. Even if you just watched it. So here is one of my favorite Thanksgiving Memories:
My mother slid the cornbread dressing into the oven as my sister and I chopped vegetables and stirred pots. The turkey was almost done and we could hear the sounds of football and male conversation drifting in from the den as my Granddaddy, brother, husband and uncle attempted to stay out of the way. My petite and very proper, Southern Baptist grandmother was wearing her Sunday best and chatting with us as we prepared our Thanksgiving feast.
I took a moment to pause, mentally, and appreciate the beauty of what we were sharing. Three generations of women, gathered around the stove and giving thanks for all the blessings we enjoyed. I became a little teary as I realized my grandparents were getting older and one day, this crystal clear moment would fade to a hazy memory.
The channel changed in the next room and now instead of hearing Sports Center, we began overhearing Fox News reporters discussing President Bill Clinton’s recently discovered indiscretion.
“Mmm, it’s just shameful,” Momma said as she stirred the gravy.
My sister and I nodded in agreement as my grandmother said in her very Southern drawl, “I cain’t believe he had oral sehx in the Oval Office. What is this world coming to?”
I lost consciousness after that, but awoke certain that this particular Thanksgiving would never fade into the recesses of my mind. And for that, I am thankful.
Got any hilarious holiday memories of your own??
Another Southern Baptist Grandmother comment I know you haven’t forgotten: About her honeymoon photo…
“Louis Jr. was 15 minutes old in that one” Mercy! ..
that’s just creepy …. but memorable. hehe.
LOL! Well, I have a story about when a cough drop saved my marriage and kept me from sure starvation on a shopping trip. But somehow that just doesn’t top your grandmother dropping oral sex into the kitchen conversation.
Amy Mullis recently posted..The Cough Drop – A Thanksgiving Miracle
But now you must share with the group about the cough drop.
Okay, but if I could get my gramma to drop something in it like yours did, it would be even better. This is up on my blog now, but it actually took place a couple of years ago. Curse the crinkly paper!
The Cough Drop – A Thanksgiving Miracle
Bill and I were sitting in that special kind of traffic jam that comes just before the holidays and is the result of a small town growing like an overdose victim of Jack’s magic beans, leaving mundane things like convenience and city planning behind.
The roads were packed like the straw in a peach milkshake. Fruit gets stuck in the end, all movement stops, and nobody gets any relief. With a milkshake you can pull out the straw and suck out the peach pulp. With overburdened roads, the obvious answer is to block off one lane with orange cones and commit to a ten-year construction project.
We’d dropped our kids off at a mega-bookstore at what seemed like a short time earlier, doling out the last bite-sized candy bars from Halloween left in the bottom of my pocketbook to hold them until we got back and could hit a nearby buffet extravaganza. Sometimes eating out, even with two teenaged mouths to feed, is a better idea than a sound investment plan.
In the meantime, the Highway Patrol issued an all-points-bulletin to every mall-bound traveler in the area, describing our location, destination, and current state of irritability. That’s the only reasonable explanation for the fact that our car began to attract morons like a pan of biscuits attracts men named Bubba.
Traffic stalled and Christmas shoppers begin to share the joy of the season with their fellow travelers one finger at a time. I attempted to retain my normal good nature even though Bill was getting testy. He always gets that way when he misses snack time.
Bill: Do you have any more candy in your pocketbook?
Me: Why? Are you hungry?
Bill: No, I thought I would toss some out the window to lure people out of our lane.
Me: You’re being sarcastic because you’re too hungry. (Pointing across six lanes of stationary traffic.) There’s a Wendy’s. And a Chinese buffet. And a pizza place. I’ll bet that gas station has candy bars.
Bill: Are you hungry?
Me: (Fumbling through my pocketbook.) No. Why do you keep bringing it up? Look–there’s that place with the wonderful barbecue ribs. I could walk there and back before you got to the red light.
(I find a cellophane-wrapped object which I pull surreptitiously from my bag. I wince as a tiny crinkling sound gives me away.)
Bill: What’s that?
Me: Nothing.
Bill: What is it?
Me: Nothing. Leave me alone, willya?
Bill: You have food.
Me: No I don’t. It’s a cough drop. (Here I wave the cough drop with a flourish. It’s of a nondescript color somewhere in between magenta and pink eye.)
Bill: I want half.
Me: It’s mine. I found it. (I fondle the cough drop like it was the One Ring.)
Bill: We can take turns licking it.
Me: (Pensively) I don’t think I’ve bought any cough drops this season. . .not since I had the flu that year we had the big snow.
Bill: You can have it.
Me: No you. I can wait.
Bill: I can wait, too.
We laughed together, the warm laughter of two people coming together over misfortune.
Under cover of laughter, I shucked the paper off the cough drop like it was a peel and eat shrimp and popped it in my mouth.
Just then, in a holiday miracle moment, traffic parted like the men’s restroom line for a father-daughter combination. Nothing clears the tracks like a man doing daddy-duty with a lace-clad toddler in tow. We picked up the boys, and wheeled into a nearby restaurant.
Bill: See, it all turned out okay because we made sacrifices and worked together. That’s what Thanksgiving is all about.
We all smiled at each other like the Brady Bunch on the 29th minute of a 30 minute show. Secretly, I gave thanks for a cough drop appetizer that kept me from acting like a turkey.
Amy Mullis recently posted..The Cough Drop – A Thanksgiving Miracle