Leading up to the dinner, there were numerous chuckles and references to "burning butter" and "pots boiling over" and "pressure cookers exploding" - even though the pressure cooker has intelligently been banned.
So, the butter was burned badly, but it was discovered before the fats ignited, so that is a feather in our caps. It stank, of course, and our clothes are imbued with its odor, but small price to pay. The people from the fire alarm company called a couple of times, and I wished them a "Merry" Thanksgiving; no one knew how to properly disarm the alarm, and it continued to intermittently do series of short blasts for about 20 minutes, and, come to think of it, we were doing a pretty good imitation of a ship of fools at anchor in a fog as thick as pea soup.
A couple of other pots - the gravy, the potatoes - were set and poised to burn or boil over, but by now we were vigilant, and my mother began a long discourse wondering how such events could have occured.
My father couldn't figure out what was going on. I told him we had to air out the house, so we would open the back door in the kitchen, which had a screen door, and the front door, which had no screen...so would he please make sure that his cat was in a bedroom with the door firmly closed; my parents are quite concerned with their overweight cat scampering out the door. Very concerned. Very. I shall not go into detail.
Very solicitous they are.
So, he says the cat is fine, where's the fire? So I say, the fire's out, there was no ignition...howzat?...there was no ignition of the butter...howzat?...IT DID NOT START ON FIRE- almost, but it didn't. So, doors open...bow (pointing to the front) and stern (pointing to the back). I did this since everyone was Navy.
So make sure the cat's secured,mate!
The damn cat's alright! How do ya turn that damn thing off? ( at this point, the alarm was cycling through its tale of woe and alarum.)
Long story short, within 20 minutes he discovers the door to the bedroom open and his cursory inspection reveals no cat.
Who opened this door?
No response was forthcoming, except from my niece's daughters, who brightly denied having done so, then turned at me and gave me one of those blah! blah! so there, mr. smarty pants! looks, and waved their little fingers around, as if I were the culprit. I shook a fist at them, and they ran away laughing. Bloody gene pool!
Where's the cat? I heard. Who opened this door?
I whispered that I had told you to close it; I did not want to be heard, but I did want to let the words out, for they began to choke me like oil on a choppy sea......whereon I am swimming from a shipwreck ( naufragium!) and trying to save myself, and not having much luck, and gulping down sea water and oil from the ruptured fuel tanks, and waiting for the Titanic - on her wonderful maiden voyage - to swing into view to rescue me! Ah, peace and contentment at last!
My mother regalled us with 5 or 6 years of stories of how she puts pots on the stove, immediately sets the burner of high "to warm things up" as she angelically puts it, then proceeds to answer the phone, or go down stairs, or start reading her favorite book, and before you know it, Backdraft!
I think...I strongly suspect that this is a sign of her insanity: she has always steered clear of friends and relatives that show any signs of being hazy or indications of dementia, rathering treating them like wounded pack dogs who will slow things down for the rest of the pack, and so have to be put out of their misery. So she long ago adopted the strategy of doing odd things in an obsessional way - even though she was demonstrably compos mentis - in order that when the time really came, she could always claim she had been doing it that way all along. She is a master mind of analysis; ask her.
None of the rest of us were remotely interested, and we edited this op-ed of lack of interest with the punctuation of bored and loud yawns, but she read it all as huzzah! and encore!
My father became visibly upset when she told him she was giving us some left-over turkey, and not to worry, for she had all she needed for his soup, for it was the soup he truely loved, not the festal board where we peck at the bird itself - a festal board oft ruined by the gowking e'en of kin eating like kine! ( yes, that's e'en for eyes. you had to be there. and kine is cows or whatnot...one of those breeds which do not split the udder or the hoof or whatever it is they split or cleave or separate.) I fully felt he would go out front and begin going through the cooler, with which we had transported our share of the feast from home, and now was meagerly filled with turkey shreds. It began to feel like the holidays at Cold Comfort Farm.
I had picked up my brother - he has no drivers' licence - and now he and my wife gave visible and audible rumblings of mutinous discontent.
I cheerfully said it was time to go, and we pushed our way into the elements.
On the way back, my brother went "Oh, jeez!..." everytime we passed a convenience store,and muttered something about cigarettes and not having any money...
But he said nothing about good samaritans, so I did not offer. I don't think the Good Samaritan bought a smoke for that guy down on his luck. (Although we did joke about the ancient Assyrians: Hey Nebby Chadnezzzer...ya'll got an extra one o' them ziggurats!)
He had not taken a drink all night, nor did he smell of booze when I had picked him up. Now being out of money may explain not being soused when your ride comes to the door, but it doesn't explain why no free noggins o' rum were hoisted at the dinner.
It's a bit too early for an instant-replay decision on a miracle...but I've been being a good boy, with a selfish interest in getting something good for myself. If his sobriety is how it works out, I suppose I can work up a good deal of enthusiasm...eventually.
As the old hymn goes: " God makes it a really, really big deal / His ways of mystery to conceal...",
or something along those lines.
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