COLUMN: It’s all in the family
I just spent the weekend with my family all in the name of Thanksgiving. It’s always an interesting experience, and I knew this weekend would be no different the moment I walked through my grandparents’ door in St. George and my aunt already had a contact stuck in the back of her eyeball. She was sitting in a motorized chair that that her arm was strapped into. Because she had recently had surgery on her shoulder, her arm was being raised up and down to exercise the muscle while her other hand was frantically trying to pry out the contact.
Everyone was in a panic, telling her she needed to visit InstaCare. At the same moment, my dad started complaining about cold sores that were developing on his lip. The aunt with the stuck contact suggested Preparation H, which immediately changed the conversation to hemorrhoids.
I was in for an exciting vacation.
Being surrounded by family has taught me that relatives not only make things more chaotic, but also more difficult??maybe redundant???. Once too many people get together – siblings, cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles – it suddenly takes six of them to make mashed potatoes, three to walk the dog that no one usually wants to walk outside and 10 to choose a movie that half of them don’t want to watch anyway.
It also takes five people to set up for dinner. One sets up extra card tables and covers them with decorative clothes, another gets out the dishes, one more puts out the silverware and some innocent little kid usually gets forced into filling cups with ice and water.
And when it comes down to a family party, almost everything has a 30-minute rule. It takes 30 minutes to set up dinner tables and get everyone sitting down long enough to say a 30-second blessing. There is also at least a 30-minute cleanup after a feast while moms serve dessert. When the family wants to watch a movie together, it takes 30 minutes to start it and another 30 for everyone to stop holding five conversations over the film. If games are played, everyone has about a 30-minute attention span before they give up because they realize they can go to the bathroom for 10 minutes without their turn coming around again.
The reason for these get-togethers is sometimes unknown, but my guess is parties are planned so relatives can gawk over each others’ kids. A baby can keep eight adults entertained for hours, and a 1-year-old can stop everything if she happens to decide to sit in the dog’s water bowl. If a toddler decides to strip off her clothes, no one gets mad and it’s the running joke for years. And grandparents will always be patient enough with kids to let them run around for 20 minutes, even when they are supposed to be posing for pictures.
Another reason for family reunions may just be so we have embarrassing memories of each other that will be brought up for the rest of our lifetimes. When my brother called to wish us all a happy Thanksgiving last Thursday, he was teased and reminded that he better eat enough this year at his in-laws. This is because when he was about 4 years old, he went home crying because he was still hungry after the holiday. That joke comes up every year, even though he’s 23 years older. We are also always reminded to be careful with the microwave because a cousin broke the button off my grandparents about 30 years ago. And everyone better be careful around the dog because 20 years ago when old Buttons was alive, a cousin stepped on his foot and apparently broke his neck. Go figure.
Family always means food, and no matter how much middle-aged aunts and uncles complain about the weight they’ve gained, caramel corn, pumpkin cake rolls, pies and brownies are always finished off, and I know it’s not just the young people eating them. And even though the adults may eat all the junk food, no one is allowed to comment if someone looks larger than they did the year before. We learned this the hard way after my grandpa asked my cousin when her baby was due. There was no baby due.
If we’re really honest with ourselves, we’ll all just accept that families are crazy, but it doesn’t really matter. Relatives keep things interesting. So if any of us were focused on being thankful this past weekend, we may have included the folks that create embarrassing moments, make life harder sometimes and remind us of all the stupid stuff we’ve done. And in the end, maybe we’re all better for it.
Manette Newbold is a senior majoring in print journalism. Comments and questions can be sent to manette.n@aggiemail.usu.edu.