My extended family consists of two parts: One part lone wolf uncle who comes up from Georgia once a year to spend Christmas quietly drinking, pays a visit to the Air and Space Museum, and occasionally declares that he “digs” this or that. And one part Rosier Gang, made up of my aunt who I love, my little cousin who is delightful, but only eats bread products and, as a result, takes a slew of vitamin pills everyday, my other cousin who is in a heap of trouble, and my slightly sexist uncle who gives me endless satisfaction every time he visits and inevitably hits his big head on the low hanging chandelier in the front foyer.
Holidays are divided like this: Thanksgiving my family makes one pie then drives three hours south to my aunt’s house where she slaves for hours while Amy and I ‘help’ by occasionally stirring or removing something from the oven when explicitly told to do so. My mother usually chats and my father, being a good sport, kind of watches football with my uncle. At Christmas my mother picks a color theme and spends weeks buying paper and coordinating each package, bow, and ribbon so when my aunt and family come up their dollar store paper clashes so profoundly we are forced to open presents almost immediately.
This year, however, thanks to my troublesome cousin, my aunt has decided to forgo the holiday altogether and head far South for some sort of vacation from life and family.
This, of course, leaves my family stranded and puts the weight of an entire Thanksgiving celebration on each of our shoulders.
...
Ok, here’s the plan: Jim gets pecan pie (which is kind of a cop out because Jim always gets pecan pie because he is from Georgia and actually uses the pecans his brother sends him picked from their childhood home-farm), I am stuck with gravy (because I’m the only one Aunt Sue could ever talk into spending half an hour stirring turkey fat non-stop), Mom takes turkey (natch), and Amy calls pumpkin pie. This is all decided a few weeks ago.
Sunday I make it back to Virginia. My mother is out of town and Amy moved to Rosslyn, so it’s just Jim and I. I poke around the kitchen a bit.
My mother thought of everything. Amazing, amazing, amazing. I love her. Outside is an entire box of homegrown pecans, hand shelled and ready for pie making. There's a brand new pan on the stove complete with some kind of special rack where a turkey is supposed to sit. From a cabinet, Jim pulls out a new and strange-looking gravy separator and we argue technique (neither of us actually knowing anything about it) and (here’s why I really like my mom) stuffed in the depths of the freezer she’s carefully hidden a fully prepared just-in-case pumpkin pie.
I can't wait til Thursday.
