I have a little secret. Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday. Sh-h-h-h-h. Nobody in my family knows that and I don't want it to get out. I want them all at my house entertaining me with their silly jokes, crazy laughter, and with all their hilarious and darling children in tow. That's all I want. I do not care if there is a turkey. I don't even like turkey and I especially do not like it on the day it was intended to be eaten. It gives me a stomach ache and I believe I am allergic to it.
A giant Thanksgiving meal is hard for me to make. It takes a lot of thought and planning and I don't like to think that much. I don't like to cook and if it wasn't for my family who I love to the moon and back I would be shoving TV dinners in the oven. I do it for them and try not to be crabby about it. To me it's like cooking fried eggs, bacon and toast. Will it all be done at the exact right time? Chances are...for me...no. I apparently have no sense of space or time because all of a sudden it seems the turkey is done. I have peeked at it in the oven all day and basted it within an inch of it's life and then...ding...it's done. I'm sick of smelling it and then Oh hell....I forgot to put the beans on the stove. The stuffing needs to be pulled out, the bird needs to be transferred to another surface to be carved and I'm still putting olives in little dishes and setting the table. There is always something I've left in the oven and the damn jellied cranberries won't come out of the damn can. And then...oh yea..the potatoes need to be mashed and the gravy needs to be made and it all needs to be hot when it gets to where it's supposed to be. It's a nightmare of epic proportions.
We don't have a dining room. I don't know why...we just don't. If it was a dining room the space between the living room and the kitchen would be too small to feed a mess of people anyway. There are bookcases and a piano so really there is no room for a table. We drag a giant table in the from the garage where it lives all year except for food holidays. It's not something I can start setting the day before and end up to have a lovely flower arrangement sitting in the middle of a snow white cloth. And matching napkins. I'm lucky if I remember to buy napkins. This year I didn't and we had summer napkins with pears dancing around on them at the plates. I also don't have much counter space in the kitchen. There isn't any room to keep steaming bowls of food warm. I ram things in a bowl, stick a spoon in it and give it to a grandkid to bring to the table. And really...by the time I get everything on the table I am so sick of looking at it that I can't eat. We say a hasty prayer and everyone digs in while I sit and wait for my stomach to unclench.
In spite of all this I am thankful but I don't need a day to be. I have a wonderful husband who kisses the back of my neck just at the time I want to beat him about the head for getting in my way by the sink. I have charming and funny daughters who know how to make gravy and will peel as many potatoes as need be without complaining. I would be complaining. I have daughters who laugh at me and my craziness with beautiful smiles on their faces. I have sons-in-law who are good dads and husbands and who are like the sons I never had. And then there are the grandbabies. Sigh. I love those darling kids with all my heart and even though one of them broke my glass garden gazing ball shooting nuts and mini marshmallows out the back door at the squirrels in my my yard with a slingshot I did not care. If I didn't have to make a that giant stinkin' meal the day would have been perfect.
I was listening to a podcast the other day when the two people involved started discussing the merits of knitting for others. There had been a long discourse about technical stuff and I had been thinking about pulling the ear buds out when I heard 'it may sound selfish but I only knit for myself'. Hm-m-m-m. It did sound selfish but I agreed with most of what followed because I now knit only for myself, my family, and Hats for the Homeless. I am only a giver when it comes to people who will appreciate what I have spent hours doing. And, as selfish as that sounds, that's what it is. I'm sorry.
I love knitting for the people in my life who beg for more wool socks. I love knitting little socks for grandkids who already appreciate the warmth of wool. I also love knitting doll clothes and hats and mittens as gifts because I know the intended will enjoy them and wear them. They live around me and know how much time it takes to knit that little sock. Or that big sock. They don't knit but they love that I do.
I couple of years ago I stopped knitting for people who were not wool-worthy.....which reminds me of one of my favorite TV shows and being 'sponge worthy' but that's another story altogether. I had started knitting socks for serious and people...non worthy people...began to ask me to knit some for them so I did. Because I am a sucker like that. If someone wanted to keep their feet warm with my wool socks who was I to turn them down? A hand knit sock is a gift of warmth from the heart. I knit like a fiend for people who I thought would appreciate the gift I was giving them, wrapped up the socks and gave them away. Little did I know that those socks were being thrown in the washing machine and having to go through various other traumas. It took awhile but I soon learned to be a selfish giver.
My first glimmer of someone not being worthy was when I got a pair back that I had knit for my daughter's day care provider. She wanted me to mend the giant holes and seeing as though she had thrown them in the washer and -gasp-dryer so many times that they had felted I had a hard time finding any stitches I could connect with. She had so loved the little socks my granddaughter had worn to her house that she begged for a pair but alas....she is not worthy.
After a series of finding out what other mind bending things people had done to my wool socks I got the shock of my life and a bad stomach ache. I had knit a pair of beautiful cabled socks for my now ex-boss for Christmas one year thinking it was a lovely gift. A couple of months later, at work, we were having a discussion about knitting with a client and the boss yanked off her stinky boot to show that hand knit socks weren't all they were cracked up to be. I actually gasped aloud when I saw the condition of my socks. There were such huge holes in the heels that really...there was no heel left to even mend. And they were dirty and stunk to high heaven. I almost cried. I was speechless with sock grief. And a little embarrassed in front of the client. I wanted to sink into a big pile of yarn and have it close over me. I told her to take the other sock off and stuck both of the smelly things into my purse. I also told her that I was going to mend them but what I actually did was have a little funeral for them and bade them a sad good bye. We never spoke of the socks again but that day, as I stood weeping over the socks in my wastebasket, I took a vow to never, ever do it again. I vowed to make a list that only included sock worthy people and to have a strict policy....and never veer from said policy....about what a person has to be like before I will even have a glimmer of consideration about knitting for them. Selfish? You be the judge.
I guess there is another side to the coin. The one where if you give someone a gift it is theirs to do with what they will. The socks are not my socks anymore if I give them away and I should get over it. I bet that's what you are all thinking. I try to think like that but I'm selfish and I'm happier that way. And really...it's all about me.
Please take time out of your busy day to cast your ballot. It's a freedom we are all entitled to. It's a freedom we all might not agree with but it's yours now. And please think about voting NO on both amendments. As a country we need to go forward not backward. We don't need to go back to an era where voting was restricted because of gender or race. We formed this country on basic freedoms and the ability to vote is the most important one. Wear your I Voted st
My mother has Alzheimer's and it has finally been diagnosed as being in the middle stages. If these are the middle stages I can't begin to imagine what the end stages are like. It's been a hard road for all of us...my sister, myself and my mom because for a long time we had no idea what the hell was going on. Looking back we can see where it began and how it manifested itself into our everyday lives like a dark, shadowy person we also had to deal with. The disease is an entity unto itself. It takes away the person you knew and leaves you with two people you hardly know at all. Some days you are talking to your mom, taking some shit, and some days you are talking to the shadowy person who still thinks your father is alive after being dead for 16 years.
Mom had spent all the money she had by the time my sister and I realized that something was not quite right. She sent away for things that were just plain nonsense only because she wanted to see them in person. She gave thousands to charities and had so many magazine subscriptions that on the days I brought her mail in I would have to actually lug it. She took loans out against her house and spent the money is such a short amount of time that I was speechless when I discovered it. And speechless doesn't happen often for me. She gave such reasonable explanations for all this that it took some time before I brought the hammer down and took her checkbook away and also took over her bill paying. I had arguments with the bank and arguments with magazine companies. I was stonewalled by the VA when I explained that there was something wrong with mom and they blew me off. I feel as though I've spent the past almost three years arguing with someone about any number of things every damn day.
Now mom has forgotten all about that. She thinks that my dead dad is there and that she can talk to her own mother who has been gone since 1963. In her Alzheimer's adjusted mind there are all kinds of people who come over and want her to cook them food and find them a place to sleep. And dad? Well, if dad isn't there then he is surly at the bar tossin' them back with his buddies or out with some 'hotsie-totsie'. She hides in her bedroom when the house is full of the people only she can see and even though she is alone she thinks she isn't. According to her it isn't even her house anymore and she is waiting to go live somewhere else. She's tired of taking care of everyone else and the dumpy old house she's been forced to live in. It's a sad state of affairs.
And now I'm going to admit that I do the things I do for my mom because I am her daughter and that is the way things are supposed to go. I don't feel much empathy because she was an ass-grinder of a mother who was always right and if things didn't go her way she just quit talking and gave everyone the silent treatment. She demanded certain behavior which was of the' children should be see and not heard' variety. She bullied, she publicly humiliated, and she never apologized. Ever. She groaned when asked to watch her grandchildren for any length of time and then told you all the bad things they had done while you were gone. When asked to send over empty food boxes so that the kids could play 'store' she brought over an armful of booze bottles and empty brandy boxes. There were no warm fuzzies and that was just how it was.
I am sad that a person's mind can get so muddled that they don't know they live in their own home anymore. I am also kind of sad to see the crazy force that was my mother dwindle down to a little confused person still trying to be right and blaming the phantom people she claims live in her home for all the things that go wrong or that go missing. My sister is the kinder, softer, warmer person my mom needs and is the best. She's the best at talking moms out of things and being nice. I'm only the best at getting things done and making phone calls. There is no hugging and no kisses on top of the aging head. We weren't brought up that way and I save all that for my own girls and darling grandbabies. I don't think my mom would like it anyway. She's a prickly old thing who is home alone in her house full of made up people and every day the phrase 'you reap what you sow' goes through my mind. I have a hard time giving to a person who didn't give of them self and, as sad as that is, I have to accept it and go on.
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