We should all have one person who knows how to bless us despite the evidence. Grandmother was that person to me.
~Phyllis Theroux
When I grew up in rural Kansas, we took Christmas dinner seriously. My grandmother began losing her mind in earnest about a week before the holiday. She would drag out the good dishes that had been purchased weekly at the local grocery store over what seemed to be years. I can remember when she would come home with a new component for the set and make my grandfather place it in the china hutch after she moved every single piece at least twice to find just the right spot for it. I will never forget the time he dropped the new sugar bowl and broke it into two pieces right before her eyes. We won’t even discuss what words came from my five-foot-tall grandmother.
She cooked for days — homemade mincemeat pie, fudge and divinity, and the most mouthwatering cloverleaf yeast rolls. There was rarely anything my family could agree on, but everyone loved the taste of those rolls. If there were just one left in the basket, several people would be eyeing it. More than once, my cousin Brian got a fork in the hand for being too slow to grab the roll.
During the most memorable holiday season of my childhood, we had fried fish as well as ham for Christmas dinner. My grandfather would fish for crappie and filet them with no bones. We had freezers full of it, and I grew up spoiled by the harvest from our gardens and from hunting and fishing. We ate what my grandpa provided and were the better for it. Those crappie were special to us. Gran would dip them in a beer/pancake batter and fry them in an old, iron pot with a basket. It was and still is the most delicious fish I have ever eaten.
We ate well that year, until no one could move or eat one more morsel — and then the fight started. I cannot tell you what it was about, but the grand finale of it found my grandmother wearing a piece of fried crappie on her forehead. There was a moment of shocked silence as the fish began a slow descent down her nose and finally to her lap.
The family held a collective breath, not sure what would happen. My grandparents were the stern, silent type. In fact, I was positive there was no humor in them that I could see. My cousins, my father and I very carefully pushed back from the table. It was one of those moments that lasted a hundred years, and we were all at her mercy.
Gran raised a hand, wiped a smear of homemade tartar sauce from her forehead and looked at it. I could feel the laughter bubbling up inside me, and I fought to control it. My cousin Michelle pinched me on the leg, hoping to stop me from committing the ultimate act of childhood idiocy. I thought for a moment that my young life would be over when I heard my father making a noise like a cat coughing up a hairball. We all turned to see him, red-faced and struggling to maintain his composure, but it was clear he would be the first to snap.
All eyes went back to my grandmother, smeared with tartar sauce and stone-faced. My father continued to fight the laughter, and looks bounced between the eighteen adults and six kids around the table, like a tennis match.
Finally, Gran drew in a breath. We all held ours. She lifted the fish from her lap, where it had ended its slide, looked at it and then looked at my father. Then she said, “Oh, to hell with it,” and lobbed the fish across the table at him, where it landed on his shirt with a plop. The moment hung there in stunned silence, and then the food began to fly.
I think it took us most of the afternoon to clean up the mess that followed, but it was, in my memory, the best Christmas ever.
After she passed, with most of us kids being adults and starting families of our own, we talked about it and decided to have one more holiday meal together. We gathered at my grandfather’s and did all the old traditions. We got out the china and the table, and my aunty tried her hand at the cloverleaf rolls. As we sat together one last time as a family, my cousin Brian gave the blessing, and in a quiet voice he thanked the Creator for flying fish.
~Cj Cole
