Discovering Culture in the Season for Gratitude
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Mom became the family matriarch nearly a quarter of a century ago and since then you can count her driveway full of hungry visitors ready to gobble come Thanksgiving day.
Any holiday, really.
As her youngest child, I was appointed to help with deviled eggs some decades ago, and I maintain that as “still-the-youngest”, this should be my only job.
But Mom is having surgery this year.
Nothing too serious, but serious enough she gets to excuse herself from lifting a finger outside of those it takes to feed her own mouth. In all her free time post-retirement, I am certain this whole surgery thing was an elaborate plan made to kickback and nap while someone else destroys their own kitchen.
As the youngest-and-most-prettiest, I thought surely I could stick to tradition and butter up my much older sister to do the bulk of the work. But it turns out, as the only child-free child left in the family, I seem to have the most hands and spare change to absorb the blow of mom being laid up.
*pouts adorably*
It isn’t that I can’t cook. In fact, I’m quite good at it. But I find it laborious and expensive. This probably has to do with the fact that I prefer complicated recipes full of premium ingredients to meatloaf or pot roast — both common meals from my childhood home.
Several years ago I took a family social work course in which we were all assigned the task of preparing a family recipe to share over a round-table potluck. It was constructed to bring out conversation around tradition and culture and I wracked my brain to come up with anything. Anything, at all…
Sure, there were dishes that Mom made frequently, but she grew up desperately poor and her own mother was too ill to teach her how to cook. Boiled red beans and rice were the main ingredients standing between them and starvation.
Many of my classmates discussed bringing dishes that represented their heritage, eastern European, Mexican, Southern, even Indian. My sister and I had performed ancestral research and came up with British, French, Swedish, and Norwegian, but making a dish I’d never eaten in my life didn’t feel like an authentic way to approach the assignment.
Tracing memory, I recalled snapping green beans with Grandma, cutting my fingers more than potatoes I was tasked to peel, and learning how to make homemade sausage gravy for biscuits.
I have always envisioned the transfer of cultural traditions to be a much more magical experience than chore assignment.
The professor ignored my excuses, insisting that every family had dishes they passed down through the generations — I just had to think harder. For the record, I think her argument is short-sighted. There are plenty of families who don’t cook at all. And what about people who grew up without a strong family unit? Despite my whining, I finally settled on turnips.
Turnips were a dish Mom made religiously on holidays which virtually no one ate except my sister. Once sis was old enough, mom passed the responsibility (“tradition”) on. I tried them every year until I finally liked them around the age of 29 — coincidentally the same year my sister tried a new “recipe” by adding a boat-load of cheese.
I wasn’t excited about bringing turnips, and not one of my classmates tried them after checking the dish’s name-tag, but I brought some food, damn it!, and I got an A.
I have been mourning my lack of culture ever since.
With Mom planning her recovery, the family has been dividing tasks for the upcoming holiday. Sis will host at her house, Stepdad will buy some pre-made items from the local grocer, and I will pick up the dishes that Mom usually makes.
Silly, but that’s kind of when it hit me.
Mom has dishes that she usually makes and we’ve all grown accustomed to having them on the holidays.
More than that, everyone freaks out at the thought of not having them —
CANCEL THANKSGIVING!!!
We’re a family of divisive religions, political beliefs, musical tastes, television-watching habits, and daily mantras. For most of the year, we don’t even eat the same foods — my household preferring poultry and lots of exotic spices, my sister’s preferring chicken nuggets and crustless PBJs, others with their fast food rituals, and Mom’s with ground-beef everything.
When we come together, though, there are expectations.
There are flavors we are all craving and exceptions we will not make…
For instance: the year I made curried deviled eggs to replace the ordinary— everyone was upset, chairs were thrown (not really), and I was stuck eating (delicious) leftover eggs for a week.
We may not be a family of constant or strong culture, but we have our ways about us.
For a long time culture was a foreign concept to me — something I could study, learn, and envy about other people, not myself.
I think I may have been overthinking it.
Culture isn’t always or even often learned consciously. Not everything we believe and value gets passed on with a reason-why or clear instruction for how to uphold the family law, let alone a life-changing, empowering story of our ancestors’ strengths and all the reasons we must honor their memory.
Many of us don’t know where we “came from”, or anything about our heritage more than a few generations back. Your generation is as good as any, if you’re seeking a starting point for tradition.
Mom is burnt out and doesn’t enjoy the dishes herself, but she makes them with love for her people. Her dedication is the stuff of nostalgia and years after she’s gone, we’ll remember the love she had for us through the flavors she always promised.
This year, as Mom is taking a rest for the first time in her life, her youngest-and-wisest will put together her potato casserole that I’m pretty sure she sniped off the back of a frozen hashbrown bag.
I’ll diligently gather the many ingredients to make a broccoli salad that’s surprisingly seasoned with a shocking amount of sugar.
If I’m feeling friendly, I might even buy a jar of cherries to suspend in gelatin and sprinkle with marshmallows and toasted walnuts — a cheap dessert for a family who is only rich with love.
Most likely, I will grumble about the extra work I have to do, but secretly, I’ll be pleased to carry on the flavors that Mom has made our “home”.
Fingers crossed I don’t screw something up. It would be absolutely dreadful to have the leftovers to myself.
written for Jk Mansi’s holiday invitation:
