The tables swirled with activity during this year’s holiday gathering of four of our families.
We began with the moms planning meals.
“I am making ham and bean soup for supper.”
“I brought vegetables for a salad.”
“I will make crepes for breakfast. The kids have fun choosing fillings.”
“We are going to buy some local barbecue for supper.”
Personally, I just brought all that left-over holiday candy for in-between meals.
But, it wasn’t enough to just eat at the table.
“Grandma, I want to decorate something,” the 13-year-old granddaughter said. I opened a kit with ingredients ready to make, assemble and decorate.
It flopped before we ever cut open the gel pens. Aunty pulled out a cake mix she had tucked into her van and bought a tub of frosting.
We handed her the cake mix and several small-shaped pans. She measured, mixed and filled the pans. The minute she set the cooled cakes on the card table, half a dozen little ones eagerly crowded around her reaching for the cakes.
“I want the heart.”
“I want to do the snowman.”
“I want to do the stocking.”
The two oldest meticulously bent over their cakes and carefully spread the base coat of icing, then a pinch at a time they placed the sprinkles and sugar balls. Patiently they outlined designs, filled them in, wrote a name and bordered the miniature cake with precision.
I stood back, watched in astonishment and grabbed my camera. I like to decorate occasionally, but my cakes look more like the younger children’s work.
The first grader quickly smeared frosting across his cake, threw on some sprinkles, dragged the jell pen over his cake a time or two and promptly began eating it.
The two-year-old’s face glowed with joy as she squeezed red lines randomly over her cake.
Her older sister and cousins studied their cakes. They tried to place decor precisely, but ultimately settled on sprinkles for completing their cakes.
While they decorated, I circled the table snapping photographs. I may not decorate cakes, but I can fill a photo album.
My husband and son-in-law brought their own entertainment – a choice of remote-controlled helicopters, cars and hovercraft. They stacked them on the table and began handing out entertainment.
The complex buzzed with activity. Hovercraft hung at eye level zipping across the room, the table and our heads. Funny cars bent and folded their way around chairs, under tables and into people at the behest of even the smaller children. Helicopters buzzed over the kitchen counter, threatening to add unwanted flavor to the soup.
Exiled to the outside, one fragile helicopter landed on the high side of the roof and did not respond to the remote control.
“My helicopter is on the roof,” the grandson reported.
Not only on the roof, but in the gutter and it did not respond to electronic commands to fly.
“Try throwing this slinky up to the gutter to see if you can loosen it.”
A long line of curled metal decorated the front of the unit, but the helicopter still refused to respond.
We called maintenance for a ladder. They came, climbed and carried the toy in to the dining room table.
For one afternoon blankets and quilts covered tables and chairs as the youngest set played in the hideouts that the older children built.
During our last supper together, a wife noticed her husband, a picky eater, had not tried the eggplant.
“Try one bite of the new dish.”
He demurred.
She persisted.
Their first-grader looked straight at dad and said, “Open wide, here comes the choo choo train inside.” The table shook as other parents tried to stifle their laughter. The reluctant eater admitted he was busted. He tried a bite and reiterated that he did not prefer that vegetable.
We cleared the table of everything – including the eggplant, and suddenly it became a sewing table with fabric laid out to cut pajama bottoms.
I cautioned, “It’s flannel and I don’t think it has been pre-shrunk.”
Tracing a pattern from an existing pair of sleep pants with a bit extra for shrinkage and personal growth resulted in a clown-sized pair of plaid flannel pants. Re-fitting, re-stitching the seams littered the table and floor with snakes of fabric. Creativity turned the excess into cloth flowers with button centers. We laughed at our learning adventure, folded up the fabric and machines and cleared the table.
The final meal big and little folks ate bowls of cereal or leftovers as the official car packers worked. We said our good-byes and headed home to our own dining room tables and memories of our reunion.
(Joan Hershberger is a staff writer at the News-Times and author of “Twenty Gallons of Milk.” Email her at joanh@everybody.org)