Good Food

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, never my favorite holiday, for a number of reasons. Because of that, I really do not have a lot of memories, happy or otherwise, associated with the holiday, but I do remember one particular Thanksgiving in the late 1960's. The big family Thanksgiving dinner for grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins was to be at our house that year.

My mother planned for two weeks, prepped for one, and cooked for three days. She produced a traditional Thanksgiving feast that was a monument to her skills as cook and hostess. There were many sincere exclamations:  "Oh, Betty! The [turkey/dressing/mashed potatoes/gravy/green bean casserole/dinner rolls/cranberry sauce] is [delicious/fabulous/spectacular]!" But it was Aunt Blanche who stopped the show when she was heard to say, almost as if to herself, "Man, these olives are good."

Aunt Blanche loves green olives, and it was clear that she was thankful my mother had gone to the trouble of opening a jar and putting some on the relish tray.

Date and Time

It's 11/12/13, but that's all I have to say about it.

It snowed yesterday, our first snow of the season, although it left barely a quarter inch of it on the ground.

Another first snow I remember occurred when I was in college in Wisconsin many years ago.  We woke up one November morning to find three inches on the ground, and it was still coming down hard.

When I left the dorm that morning for my first class, I saw a girl who lived across the hall from me out on the lawn in front of the building, no coat or hat or gloves or boots. She was laughing and dancing and twirling, her arms outstretched and her head thrown back to feel the flakes land on her face. She was from Hawaii, and it was the first time she had ever seen snow fall from the sky.

I feel obliged to report that after another three weeks of Wisconsin winter, her delight in seeing snow had pretty much disappeared.

On the face of it

We had lunch out at a local restaurant yesterday, and I became quite fascinated by a group of women at a nearby table. There were nine of them, and the youngest of them was at least 65, and some appeared much older. There was no apparent guest of honor, and I got the idea they go out to lunch together somewhat regularly. I would like to have known how they all knew each other.

Seeing them all together reminded me a story about my grandmother when she was of an age to fit in with that group. She had agreed to watch a neighbor's child after school until her mother came home from work. One afternoon the girl, who was about seven or eight, arrived to find my grandmother getting ready for a little get-together for three or four of her friends. She explained that "the girls" were coming for coffee.

After the last guest had gone, the little girl asked, "So when are the girls coming?"  My grandmother replied, "Those were the girls," to which the kid responded, "But they all had grandma faces."