When All the Turkeys Have Gone Home
Let the Holidays Begin
This is the beginning of the holiday season. You think breast cancer is enough to deal with, but now you have family relationships that get magnified during the holidays.
Thanksgiving gatherings are always memorable when you open the doors of your home to relatives. You haven’t seen some of them in 17 years. Others make an annual trek from far and wide for the meal of the year. Usually they show up with no food, but they bring a full array of personalities as they walk through the door.
About the time you think it’s going to be a quiet, normal gathering, here comes “the relative”. You dodge her choice comments all day and keep looking at your watch to see how long it will take until she’s ready to go home. Then, an unforgettable moment arrives.
Aunt Lucy mounds her plate with turkey and dressing and everything else on the table. She is slicked up today with a shiny leather coat, designer jeans, and a puffed-up coif as she briskly darts toward the table to beat everyone else to a seat.
She steps on a piece of fallen turkey and starts to skid across the hard floor. Instead of falling straight down, she wildly throws her plate up into the air and falls with her arms stretched out in front of her as though she’s a diver going for lost treasure. Cranberries, gravy and dressing hit the ground at the same time as Aunt Lucy. She skids through her meal headlong on her stomach into a pile of folding chairs, like a bowling ball making a strike.
Holding back all restrained laughter, you make sure she isn’t hurt. Then you slip out the door for a break as fast as you can to release pent up hilarity before you implode.
Another unforgettable Thanksgiving!
Tips for Getting Along With Relatives:
- Keep your expectations low. It’s better to have relatives surprise you with niceness than to be upset with their negative actions.
- Don’t keep score. Laugh off the ridiculous or you will allow others to control your life.
- Even if you have nothing in common with your relatives, enjoy each other’s differences. Our differences make the world go around.
Thought for Today:
“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.”
–Erma Bombeck
Live Life,
Janelle
Let The Holidays Begin-
I followed the tips you described and had absolutly no expectations on Thanksgiving with the relatives. I went bald, not feeling well, and waiting for the stares. (I haven’t seen them since last year). Well I was the first one to arrive with my hubby to set up tables and chairs.This was at a cousins house since I was still in chemo. (It had been 27 years at my house).
Ok so we set everyhting up, decorated the tables. I made cute harvest pumpkins to put by each plate. I brought the Ham and pineapples, the string bean cassrole, the rolls,and the soda. The tables were set and everyone arrived. Whom do you think did everything while the host cooked. Not one one the 26 people got up once. I waited, served, put food on tables, cleaned up. They sat there. So when the home made ice cream was made and set out, I took a big bowl and put it all in for me. I then got the looks. I exclaimed I had not been able to eat all week except for ice cream. And now this is mine! It worked!
Next year when I am done my treatments they can return to my house. I will still eat all the ice cream!
Happy Holidays
Love and Support…Kathleen Mountney
by: cathie on November 26th, 2007 at 9:13 am