Last night was our bi-weekly family dinner. That’s at least 2 nights per month when I get to return to my parents home and re-live most, if not all, of my childhood traumas. I still fear my father will enter the dining room, clear his throat loudly, then point and scream at me to “Go upstairs and clean your room, NOW! dammit! ” – then reach for his belt, begin unbuckling it without actually looking down, just for motivation, mind you… Or, we’ll learn for the first time, all over again, that little Fluffy was just hit by a car and won’t be coming home. Ever. Again. Or realizing on Christmas morning that out of the 57 carefully wrapped gifts under the tree, once again, my pile does not include a Shetland Pony.
I still ((( quiver ))) at the thought.
Our family dinners are quaint, charming little affairs. Done up in mid-century stylings a la Mad Men, my mother places out the good china each meal. China she acquired in the mid -1950s. Indeed, the entire table looks just like the photo, above. There is the lovely table setting, the flower arrangement made by my sister, a big bowl of green peas, a giant slab of dead beast on a platter with huge knives sticking out of it, and of course, butter. Plenty O’ Butter.
But just one thing is always missing…
See that big fat white soup tureen prominently featured in the center of the table? huh? DO ya? Well, when I was 12 years old, I made just such a big fat white soup tureen in ceramics class, painstakingly hand-painted to match the china set, with tiny pink roses around the rims, and even real silver trim, which required a third kiln firing. Is THAT soup tureen ever placed out on the family dinner table? Even on Thanks Giving? NO!
Ahh. Let the trauma begin… might as well start with a serving of some very blatant rejection. That sets the tone nicely.
As I cried silently to myself yet again last night that my highly underprized big fat white ceramic soup tureen was yet again left off the table, and tried to distract myself with some overzealous chewing of the honey glazed chicken on my plate… a big fat white chunk of ceramic suddenly fell onto my tongue with a metallic ‘chink” sound as it hit my other metal-filled teeth. I almost swallowed it, shocked as I was, then reached inside my mouth and pulled it out: yep – my crown had fallen off!
Bummer. What a way to ruin an otherwise perfectly heart-clogging meal of meat and butter!
Which got me to thinking: What other things might suddenly fall off of me during dinner? I mean, it’s not like I’m getting magically younger. And God has already pre-ordained this whole “falling apart at the seams” thing that goes with even the gentlest of aging properties.
A few things I would NOT like to fall off of me and into my plate during our next family dinner party:
My self-Esteem
My Will to Survive
My gorgeous full head of Hair
My Shirt
A Sudden Spate of Free-Range Boogers
A Cascade of Uncontrollable Drool
An Ear
The Truth
Some Things I WOULD like to see drop off:
My Shame
Wrinkles
Age Spots
Low Self-Esteem
Resentments
All Debts
15 lbs of Unwanted Fat
My burning, Scorching Awareness That, Yet Again, No Soup Tureen!!!
And so I ask… what would you like/not like to fall off of you during a quaint dinner party?
NOTE: Please consider voting for my lame caption in The Good Greatsbys Caption Contest!
Yes! Please dear GOD can I lose my shame! and hold onto the truth! Thanksgiving would be my favorite holiday again. This post is hilarious, by the way. Off to vote for your caption…..
Thank you, Darla. BTW, your caption was hilarious, too! I think GG was just being nice to me this round because my captions are so pathetic
Thanks for stopping by!
please! yours are hilarious. I think G is tired of me constantly throwing up captions, so he feels bad and picks one so I’ll stop.
How can one become tired of comic perfection?
So funny and true! I love any list that places “Drool, An Ear, The Truth” in the same category
Thanks, Tori! This is the ‘family dinner season’ and I think general discomfort is in the air…
Wait… you hand-crafted a soup tureen at TWELVE?
I couldn’t have IDENTIFIED a soup tureen at twelve!
Or restrained myself from eating paste!
One of those.
Or… both.
heh heh…. Well the tureen came from a mold and is huge. I just did all the painting. And don’t knock that paste! I swear it’s nutrional. It’s wheat, right? Chock full of vitamin B
My family were early “health food” and “alternative medicine” fanatics. (Despite their beliefs, most of them did not live forever. Go figure.)
My Aunt Naomi, a ballet dancer and teacher, and a woman of spectacular beauty, vigor, and relentless self-improvement suggestions for one and all, hosted the family Thanksgiving each year. One year, my father (a man who proceeded to die quite early – at 43 years of age), noticed that Naomi and her cowboy husband Donald had deviated a bit from the health food gospel and lectured them on how they were likely to die young.
Aunt Naomi, not a woman to do anything by half measures, immediately became a zealous vegetarian. (Not previously a dietary persuasion among my earnet “organic foods” consuming relatives. She informed everyone that she would serve a tofu turkey (or similar vegetarian substitute) for the next Thanksgiving (somewhere around 1956 or so).
Outraged howling resounded from one end of Southern California to another. Eventually, a compromise was worked out. Naomi (with only a small degree of martyr attitude) prepared both a tofu turkey and a dead turkey Thanksgiving meal. As a youthful (and to this day) carnivore, I happily chewed on drumsticks and thighs while Naomi and Donald pretended to enjoy their tofu turkey. In fairness it must be said that Naomi (who later added “gluten-free” to her strict dietary restrictions) lived until her 90s in Australia. Uncle Donald, who went from cowboy to electrical engineer to professor of chiropractic is still alive in Australia (even after a heart attack ot two). While I am perfectly normal, my family is quite strange.
I’ve never had to eat a ToFurkey, but my empathy goes to those who attempt to feed themselves while remaining kind to the world and to animals. Aunt Naomi sounds like an interesting woman.
Don’t let your boobs fall off. And pull out the damn soup tureen and fill it up. Say Mom, damn it, we are using it this year. Nobody except you will do it. Unless you invite me, and then I will.
Thank You for your kind support, Elyse! You’re coming to dinner this year, right??? Just take Exit 3 off the New Jersey Turnpike, turn left at the Tree of Shame onto Wekindahateyou Blvd, then park in front of the house where a ring of mangey old uncles are gathered around an otherwise ignored ceramic soup tureen in lawn chairs spitting long streams of tobbacco juice into it. Who owns a Spitoon these days, anyway?
It’s tempting — if only to get away from my sister-in-law, the militant vegan vegetarian bird lover.
Your poor soup tureen ….
Spectra, darling, grab that lovely soup tureen and fill it with paper whites and moss for a lovely centrepiece at the Christmas festivities. Martha would be proud!
That’s actually a good idea, Lynne! Would never have thought of it.
Your soup tureen is wasted on your parents. Grab it and take it home with you!
I think this sad, forgotten soup tureen will be my only inheritance. Did I maybe fail to mention that we never have soup with dinner? I’m not saying that’s an excuse. Just sayin’.
How did I miss this post. Huge smiles. I would like a lot of things to fall off during a family dinner (which fortunately we rarely do these days). I would like the tongue of my middle sibling the pompous twit to fall off. I would like the (slightly smaller) pompous gene to fall from my eldest brother to be replaced with a sense of humour. And (shamefully) I would like the head of my youngest brother’s wife to land in the gravy. And stay there.
HA HAH! Perfecto! THIS is why I wrote this post. Lets face it.