I don’t come from a big family. Even at our largest gatherings, our number was always under 20. My grandparents. My mom and her two sisters, who each had a husband and two kids–but I don’t think all 16 of us were ever together for more than one or two Christmases in my life.
Even with such a small number, we always had a kids table. If the cousins from Utah were in town, the six of us cousins would eat around my grandparents’ kitchen table. If they weren’t there, the card table would get set up a few feet away from the adult table. I always heard other friends of mine in college or whatever talk about that moment they got to eat at the big table for the first time–they knew they were an adult. They wanted to sit there.
I never wanted to–mainly ’cause small talk with the South Dakotans was boring. And also because I’ve always been a picky eater, and if I was at the kid table no one could see I wasn’t eating vegetables. While the big people ate and socialized and took their time, we would scarf what we could as fast as we could, and disappear to the basement to watch TV, snack on the strategically placed freshly based Christmas Cookies scattered around the house, and I’d claim my place in my grandpa’s blue lazy-boy rocker to read.
As the family began to splinter–a divorce, a death, another death, a rift between the two remaining sisters, then another death–the physical need for the kids table was erased, and those of us who gather for holidays came to the table together, trying to fill in those holes that should be filled but never will without ethereal intervention.
I am the oldest of my generation; my sister is the youngest. Now that my sister is 22, I suppose we are all adults, although I still have a hard time thinking of her as one. But there’s still a need for the kids’ table. But now, it’s for my grandma and grandpa.
Last week as Schnappi and I hosted Thanksgiving in our home, the eight of us (including Schnappi and my sister’s boyfriend) I watched my grandpa reluctantly come to the table to quickly eat, humming some strange melody to himself the whole time, and soon after take off his shoes and confusedly ask where his bed was, because he was ready to sleep. I watched my grandma pick at the things she didn’t like, and get up when she was done, waiting for someone to clear her plate as she headed back to the living room to make herself comfortable in my grandpa’s blue lazy-boy with a book. I saw how frail they have both become. And realized that they really aren’t going to be around much longer. And it wasn’t like my grandma who died from breast cancer, or my aunt from breast cancer, or my grandpa from heart failure, or my cousin from a car wreck.
They’re just…old. Their faculties slowly wearing out, becoming once again the youngest members of the clan.
Maybe they feel the weight of the holes at the table even more than the rest of us. After all, there was a point in their life where they added chairs, and not constantly removed them.
Maybe this is why our biological clocks tick. Not because we feel our own time running out to reproduce, but rather because it is too hard to see the ones who once took care of us be the ones we need to take care of.
If we end up hosting Christmas (a very distinct possibility–we enjoy the cooking. And the dog likes it), I’m going to set up a card table in the living room with three places set. One for grandma, one for grandpa, one for me. And on the fourth side will be a stack of dishes for those who have left, if they decide to pop in for a visit and a bowl of oyster stew and a slice of prune pie.
I hope they do.
1 Comment
December 3, 2008 at 9:42 am
You got a holiday story – a thoughtful and rather somber one – but a good ‘un. See you at “In The Loop.”
Be sure to catch Rik’s blog.