Turkey Day Dilemma

Today is Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Normally I am in the throes of cooking and cleaning since the next day the family will be here. Not so this year. This year my kids are at their in-laws and we will be at another family member's home.

In a way, it's kind of nice not to have to do all the cooking and clean-up that's required in order for the family to come in and devour everything in 10 minutes flat. In another way, it's sort of sad. The times change so does the family dynamic. I'm bringing the veggies to the feast tomorrow, consequently I've been making our regular veggies: squash, turnip, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, Cole slaw, applesauce, pretty much everything except the bird. This is my choice since I like all the winter veggies and I eat very little of the bird thing. (It's not that I dislike turkey, it's just that I like all the trimmings more). Of course, I ran out of something and had to go to the market, not the best idea the day before a major food fest.

As I knew it would be, the market was crammed with people trying to do all the shopping they should have done last week but didn't, on this day, the day before the feast. As I walked around the store with my list of 5 items I needed, I watched and listened to the frenzied conversations all around me. I finally stood in one place and listened to what I think is one of the most prevalent complaints I hear from folks about the holidays, or for that matter, any large family gathering. The husband (obviously not at all happy to be in the market pushing a cart around as he followed his wife), "Hey, why do we have to get this jellied cranberry stuff? None of us like this, right?" His wife's reply, "We have to get it because Uncle Jerry and Aunt Selma are coming and they always have this at Thanksgiving". He replies. " Yeah, but we don't, and it's at our house so how come we have to have it?" She says, "I told you why". He says, "That's just stupid. What's that round purple-y thing in here." He's picking up a rutabaga or turnip as he's saying this. She replies, "That's the turnip we always have." He says, "Is this the thing, that when you cook it the house stinks like garbage for days afterward?" "No" she says, "that's the cabbage you're thinking about. The turnip isn't that bad and anyway you only get it once a year so what's the big whoop?" He looks at her and says, " I gotta look at all the stuff in here. We don't need all this stuff, nobody eats all this crap". She looks at him (I can see the disdain in her face-she knows this guy she's married to is going to keep this up and she's going to have to defend everything in the cart unless she stabs him in the heart right now before he grabs one more thing in the cart-but no, she knows she can't do that in the middle of the market-it would be too messy) and says, "Your Mother always had that on the table at holidays and YOU were the one that said you wanted to have all the same things your Mom served, since SHE knew how to cook. That's why we have all this stuff in the cart. Do you want to change the menu for tomorrow, and cook it?" (In my estimation this was the gauntlet being thrown down-there was no way in Hell I was moving from the vantage point where I could hear this very interesting conversation. I wanted to see if this guy was going to pick up the gauntlet and accept the challenge so carefully orchestrated by his wife. I could see he was going over thoughts in his head. Obviously, this guy had been married a while, he knew better than to pursue the challenge. His thoughts were almost tangible to me. I could almost feel his brain trying to come up with some kind of plausible way to extricate itself out of this mess the guys mouth had put them in. His face was a mass of emotion. I was holding my breath, hoping that I was far enough away from possible explosion, if this guy was too dumb to realize that he was walking in a minefield. Now don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about, because you know you do....We've all been on both sides of this kind of give and take and we all know how to tread water when we need to. (or else we'll drown) . I waited with bated breath, unsure of the outcome of this potential disaster I was about to witness, when I saw the guy put down the thing in his hand, look up at his wife and say, "No, hon, I think you probably know best about this dinner thing." She was standing at attention as the man of her dreams, backed down in submission. I could see her eyes, seconds before shooting flaming arrows out of the pupils, quieting to a more humanly look. I finally took a breath knowing how close I had come to being in the middle of a mini mine field ready to blow.

As I left my vantage point, I turned to look at the guy. He was standing still, sweat beaded on his forehead, lips pursed blowing cool air up toward his brain. He too knew how close he came to losing the life he knew and loved in those few moments.

I walked on into the freezer section of the market, just to get a breath of cool air. All around me I could hear mini battles being waged, lost and won. I thought at that time how much a market, the day before a holiday, was much like a battlefield. There were little army's all over the place trying to control other little army's.

Why DO we put ourselves through all this?