January 15, 1998
Dear Everyone:
Didn’t say much about
Christmas in my
last letter. It occurs to me
that those who didn’t live through it might want to know just what
happened. First, the cast of
characters:
Mother, understandably frazzled after the past few
weeks.
Dad, recovering from surgery to fix his broken hip, complete with walker and mandatory exercises (he was getting pretty good at them by the time we left).
“Alice”, “Kelly”, “Park” (age 3) and “Ramsey” (6
months and big as a moose) from New York.
“Marshall”, “Jeannie” and me from California.
And the accommodations:
“Alice”, “Kelly”, “Park” and “Ramsey” were situated
in the guest room with two big
sleigh beds and a
couple of cribs.
It turned out that “Park” wouldn’t sleep in a crib, so it was
lucky that “Marshall” had a foam mattress which he had thoughtfully
stashed in the trunk. This
went on the floor for “Park”.
“Marshall” and “Jeannie” had the TV room, which was
also hosting the computer which had been moved from the guest room.
That’s two beds, a computer cart, the TV and a closet filled with
p-r-e-s-e-n-t-s that had to stay hidden until late
Christmas Eve.
Plus luggage.
After selling my condo and buying the townhouse, I
decided that there was still enough money in my savings account to allow
me the luxury of staying at the motel in beautiful downtown
Canby.
(Actually, I came away with a lot more money than I had expected
to, thanks in part to overpaying my mortgage the last few months before
the move.) And “Jeannie”
wound up spending most of her nights in the spare room of a neighbor
down the street.
Now, about
Christmas Dinner.
“Alice” insisted on preparing dinner.
After all, she’s a graduate of Cornell’s famous
hotel school and could cook a turkey dinner for 200, if required.
We didn’t have quite that many.
In fact, I don’t think more than about 14-15 showed up, even with
“Byron” and “Janice” and “Byron’s” kids.
Something “Alice” and “Byron” have in common is
that they’re both absent-minded cooks.
“Alice” would put something on the stove, turn on the burner and
then leave the room, forgetting about the stir-frying part.
Shades of the year that “Byron” came by to make his
(understandably) world-famous
prime rib.
He set up the electric rotisserie on the clothes dryer, having
thoughtfully deactivated all the smoke alarms in the near vicinity,
started the roast turning, then went down to the river to do some
fishing.
Everything was fine until I started to wonder what
that flickering light in the laundry area was.
It was a grease fire merrily burning on the hot element of the
rotisserie.
Mother and I put it out with baking soda and a long-handled
spoon. And the prime rib was
delicious.
This year, “Alice” turned her nose up at
easy-to-make stove top stuffing and made enough of her special recipe to
stuff two turkeys and a couple of Mother’s semi-pet
possums (only
voluntarily, of course; but they will eat just about anything you put
out).
Later, Mother decided to bake a chocolate cake for
dessert. She had cake mix,
but no frosting mix. So she
decided to use chocolate
mousse as a filling and melted chocolate chips as a “frosting”.
Did I mention the
microwave had
died that day? The mousse
filler started running out the sides.
The layers of cake started sliding, not unlike a mud slide in a
heavy rainstorm. We stuck
toothpicks in to hold the layers in place, then tried to “frost” the top
and sides with melted chocolate chips to hold everything together until
it “set”. This was less than
successful. Melted chocolate
tends to stick rather than spread.
No matter.
Christmas Dinner was still delicious.
We used the largest table we could find and all the good china
and stemware. After dinner,
I took on the task of stripping the leftover meat from the turkey.
I had learned years earlier that it is much easier to fit a
plastic bag filled with sliced meat into a full refrigerator than it is
to fit a plastic bag filled with a formerly 18-pound turkey into a full
refrigerator. Then it was
time to fill the dishwasher with the first load of dirty dishes and
start washing fragile stemware by hand.
And that’s when the kitchen sink backed up.
Poor Mother, who never leaves so much as a speck of
dirt on the counter was faced with a kitchen full of dirty dishes and
pots and pans and absolutely no way to clean them.
All she could do was call the plumber and leave a message for
them to call first thing in the morning.
Then she wanted to know if she could come back to the motel with
me.
As for the chocolate cake, we decided to give it to
the neighbors across the street who had visitors from
New Zealand
staying with them. (I made
sure the toothpicks were removed before the cake was wrapped in plastic
wrap.) The neighbors had
been out earlier, presumably to see the
Christmas light
displays along Baker Drive.
I won’t even begin to try to describe the lights on Baker Drive.
Suffice to say, these people are way too competitive.
You could send a kid to college for a year on what these folks
spend on strings of lights (not to mention the electricity bills).
And angels on the roof.
With trumpets. And
birds flying from one angel to another.
So I stopped across the street with the cake.
As I was regaling “Penny” about the plumbing woes, the New
Zealanders were joyously unwrapping the chocolate cake.
As I turned to leave, I saw all three (four?) of them sitting at
the kitchen table with a huge slice of cake in front of each of them.
They had come to experience “Christmas in America”.
Obviously, “Christmas in America” consists of going out to see
garish light displays, and then a neighbor brings you chocolate cake.
What a country.
Love, as always,
Pete
PS. By
the time I got back to the house the next morning, the plugged line was
cleared and most of the dishes were already clean.
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