The Post I Meant to Post Thanksgiving Morning

We'll be hitting the road in a few hours to spend Thanksgiving with my daughter and her husband and in-laws and dog in her new house on Long Island. We won't be going over any rivers in a horse-drawn sleigh, maybe through some suburban woods, but, mostly down the Taconic Parkway with Juan the Gardener at the wheel. We're bringing the pies.

When I was a child, Thanksgiving morning was a flurry of getting my two sisters and me bathed and stuffed into our matching red velvet dresses, white eyelet blouses, and black patent leather shoes with little white anklets, and woolen dress coats. We did go to Grandmother's house, although we were supposed to call her Grandmere (like the French) which became GRANDma (avec un accent grave) and eventually Grumma. Our cousins came from their farm in New Jersey, and it was for my Uncle Tigger that my heart beat its first rapid staccato. I remember sitting on his lap while he was telling a joke, snatching his handkerchief from his pocket and stuffing it into his martini. I was three and madly in love.

Grumma, a tiny, fierce woman with coiffed grey hair would preside from a red wing chair in the den while the grown-ups had drinks from a drinks cart that always held a glass of cherries and a tiny bowl of olives. We children had gingerale with one cherry each and sprawled on the rug with wooden blocks or marbles. At about age ten, I discovered the bookshelves downtairs in the playroom alongside my Uncle Tigger's red fire engine: original editions of Robin Hood, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and Treasure Island, my mother's Oz books, and Little Maid collections. While our parents told dirty jokes upstairs in French, we cousins pored over Arthur Rackham's illustrations. 

Eventually, we would be summoned to lunch, filing into the diningroom behind our Grandmother and her French poodle, Pepe, in an orderly group.  It was the era of children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard.  Good manners were paramount. Fits of giggles were not particularly tolerated, especially if they couldn't be explained, or if they appeared to be at the expense of one of the grownups. The conservative political talk of our parents and Grandmother swirled above our heads in a  boring dark cloud. Once, though, my younger sister told a joke she had heard in nursery school or on the Sandy Becker TV show. It was pretty garbled, something about a little boy and a turkey, and she only got part of it. The punchline was, "What, TURKEY?" It was nonsensical and unexpected and everyone laughed.