But Mom, Why Does all the Food Wiggle?

Thanksgiving with the Old Aunts

Many people have happy memories of childhood Thanksgivings.  Not me.  From age eight (the first after my family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin) to sixteen (my last before college), Thanksgiving was at best tedious and at worst an ordeal. 

The reason is simple.  Thanksgiving was never at our house.  Instead, it was held at one of my old aunts’ homes, usually at the ones who lived in Menasha, six miles away.  All professional women (three teachers, one nurse) according to their era’s options, they were bright, loving ladies who adored my mother, their first niece.  My maternal grandmother was the oldest of five sisters (and lived in Illinois, so she didn’t have to attend these holiday get-togethers); my ‘old aunts’ (who during the time I speak of, were probably in their fifties) had children later.  These children had the foresight to live far enough away from their parents that their Thanksgiving presence was not mandatory.  My mother’s was, and that meant my father, my little sister, and I were also required to attend these dreary gatherings.

I suppose they weren’t dreary to my old aunts, to their husbands (also middling professionals), perhaps not even to my parents.  My father, as the ‘young’ man in attendance, was always the bartender; his hefty old fashioneds kept the adult spirits high and conversation flowing.  My mother, as the much-loved niece, was fussed over and consulted on all matters culinary.  To her shame: she was a pretty good cook, and the old aunts definitely were not.  But they fluttered around whatever little kitchen was that year’s staging ground and produced, collectively, the worst Thanksgiving meals ever.  For example:

A festive gelatinous ham

It was an old aunt tradition to have ham, not turkey, for Thanksgiving.  And by ham, I don’t mean anything succulent; I mean the kind that came in a tin can with a tiny key on the side, packed in jelly, with the consistency and color of denture paste.  The aunts often tried to tart up the ham with pineapple rounds and toothpicked maraschino cherries (left over from the old fashioneds).  All that did was add more layers of jiggly ick to the main course.

Then there were the ‘molded salads.’  Read: jello concoctions in various degrees of horrid.  The old aunts thought that adding mayonnaise to jello, or mixing veggies with canned fruit, elevated the shimmying mounds to cordon bleu status.  Uh, no.  On occasion, there was a fairly simple jello creation, like lime jello with pears, that was base-line edible.  But not often.

Jello molds were ubiquitous, and bad

The worst wiggly wonder was the omnipresent tomato aspic.  What can I say?  This dish was certainly a Soviet plot to bring the United States to its knees and to borsht.  When one of the old aunts got kitchen-creative, she added sliced boiled eggs to this abomination.  Even my mother’s ‘shut up and at least try some’ demeanor softened in the face of tomato aspic.  And by dessert time (glutinous pumpkin pie), that demeanor disappeared.  My sister and I were free to leave the card-table set up for those who couldn’t fit in the uniformly small dining room.

And go . . . nowhere.  Although my old aunts’ houses looked different on the outside (one Georgian stucco [!], one Tudor cottage, one stone Colonial, one wood siding Colonial), they had virtually the same floor plans.  First floor: decent-sized living room, small dining room, small kitchen, maybe a half bath, maybe a porch of some sort.  Second floor:  who knew, as we weren’t allowed upstairs, but probably three bedrooms and a bathroom.  In other words, we children – and my sister and I were always the only children in attendance – were confined to the first floor, where there was no refuge, no place to read a book or play.  It was almost always too cold to go outside.  So we would find a corner of the living room to huddle in while the adults enjoyed their postprandial cigarettes, chatter, and ‘yes-dear-I-wouldn’t-mind-another-small-one’ drinks.

  

A holiday-sustaining Old Fashioned

I don’t think any of the old aunts had a television.  One, at least, had a basement, but it was off-limits because it was full of that uncle’s ham radio equipment.  Plus, the 50s and 60s did not have the Thanksgiving football broadcasts of today, so watching the Packers slog it out in the snow wouldn’t have been an option anyway, even if there had been a kid-friendly basement rec room.

So.  No turkey, no football, no fun.  As I got older, I tried to join the adults’ conversation – both to be polite and to stave off terminal boredom.  One year (I must have been in high school), that turned out to be a huge mistake, and it also turned out to be the most memorable Thanksgiving with the old aunts.

I should explain that whereas the old aunts were vocal, opinionated, and for their time and age progressive ladies, the old uncles were pretty taciturn.  One was seriously hard of hearing, one was always tipsy and incoherent, one never said anything, and one was dead.  During the Thanksgiving I’m now referencing, the always-silent uncle decided to speak up.  About the nascent civil rights movement.  And his contempt for the . . . well, you can fill in the blanks.

As a self-righteous teenager, I was not only appalled but also felt called upon to argue with him.  Truth be told, probably to yell at him, thereby violating years’ worth of family Thanksgiving protocol.  I remember with trembling clarity how angry I was, mostly because I believed he was terribly wrong, somewhat because I had never really heard him express an opinion before (and this was his opinion? really?).  Also I might have been so extremely tired of these Thanksgivings that I embraced an opportunity for drama, although it didn’t seem that way at the time.

Tomato aspic should be banned before heroin, plastic bags, and transfats

Whatever the causes, I was shaking with rage; a cattle-prodded tomato aspic could not have quivered or excreted more hot melt-down than I did.  My father, experiencing a momentary lull in bartender duties, took my arm and led me away.  We sat on the bottom of the stair steps (the farthest away place that house offered), and he tried to calm me down.  What he said was basically:  you’re right, and you’re right to be angry.  But this is not the right place to show it.  Your uncle will not change his views, and you will upset your family who loves you, most of whom don’t agree with him anyway. When we get home, we can talk about ways you might put your convictions to better use.

Today, I treasure the empathy to me, and to my older relatives, my father showed.  I also wonder whether it was altogether correct.  Aren’t there some times when politeness is trumped by . . . righteous indignation, for instance?  Yet his intervention also made me more aware of what I owed the old aunts (and old uncles):  appreciation for their love of me and my family, appreciation of what they achieved despite the Depression, appreciation of how they were not all, or not always, in thrall to prevailing bigotries.  Negotiating the wiggly room between standing up for what you ‘know’ is right and backing off because of good manners or localized realpolitik has haunted me all my adult life.

And I still wonder if my mother was correct in telling my sister and me to eat (or at least not complain about) the queasily undulating footstuffs served at those Thanksgivings.  Couldn’t she have exercised some influence over the menu?