A Dose of Humor for Your Thanksgiving Week...
Friends! Making your grocery list for Turkey Day and the weekend? Readying beds and perhaps cribs for your visiting relatives? Hunting down your favorite recipes?
This is “NOT-YOUR-AVERAGE Rice Crispie Treat”—note the addition of chocolate and butterscotch. Our boys have LOVED these over the years. My cousin, Bonnie, started the ball rolling many moons ago.
We’d be answering “yes” to all of the above questions at the beginning of this post. And for years, our family had many visiting relatives all thanks to my Aunt for whom I’m named. While her name was Elizabeth, we all called her “Bem” and I can’t even remember why we called her that. (She was one of my Mother’s sisters. You’ll meet some more in a minute.)
Bem and her husband, Earl, lived in a large and beautiful home in Owensboro, Kentucky. Her son, Steve, and his wife, Bonnie (many of you know my cousin Bonnie who’s like a sister to me) lived around the corner. “Those were the days” as we used to say. Bonnie and Steve have three children and it was always a treat to visit and sometimes stay with them.
Our Aunt and Uncle and cousins from North Carolina made the trek to Owensboro, as did our Aunt and Uncle from New Jersey, and cousins from Minnesota. For years we all had Thanksgiving in Kentucky…until, Bonnie and Steve moved to Florida (Now there’s a destination!) and Bem moved with them.
Can anyone guess what we did? Oh yeah, we headed to Florida. Perish the thought they have Thanksgiving alone. (I’m not sure we were invited, but we went anyway!)
We packed our Volvo station wagon to the gills and were blessed to stay out in Bonnie and Steve’s guest house. I remember it had a pool table where we unloaded our stuff, covering the entire table with who-knows-what. It was either Bonnie or Steve who said, “You had all of that in your car???”
Like the relatives in the book, we drove thru’ the night. At one point, while eating breakfast the next morning at a McDonald’s, John Jr. said, “Wow, don’t we need to stop for gas?” Of course we’d stopped during the night, but all three boys thankfully slept the entire way. Yes, miracles can happen! (My guess is for our first trip to Jacksonville, Woody would’ve been six months old, Gordy would’ve been 2 1/2, and John Jr. would’ve been 5 1/2. Ambitious, weren’t we?)
Group pic from Thanksgiving at Bonnie and Steve’s in Jacksonville, FL - I think from 1992…
My whole point to this story (You were beginning to wonder, weren’t you?) is of course that our story parallels another story, fresh out of a children’s book you simply must read called The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant.
In addition to the humorous story, the illustrations by Stephen Gammell simply make the book. The Relatives Came is a Caldecott Honor book (named after English illustrator Randolph Caldecott) which means The Association of the Library Service to Children also believed in Stephen’s talent, declaring him the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children. Every single time I read the book and dissect the illustrations, I laugh out loud.
Fast forward several years later, after my sweet Aunt Bem went to be with the Lord, John and I hosted Thanksgiving in Louisville and you can guess, The Relatives Came. At one point we could hear water running all over the house and John said, “We should go into the hotel business.”
One of many of our favorite relatives was our Uncle Bruno, who drove all the way from Statesville, North Carolina. His wife, Louise, was another one of my Mother’s sisters. (Hang on, there’s still another sister to come…) Bruno was always helpful in the kitchen, either carving the turkey, or after the big meal, readying the carcass to make some turkey noodle soup. Plus he would entertain all the kids with making paper airplanes.
Upon their departure back to North Carolina, Bruno would declare, “You worry! I’ll be back!” He usually delivered on his promise…
So let’s go back to our book, The Relatives Came. In the beginning, we meet the relatives who are loading up their station wagon. They leave in the middle of the night as their destination is apparently quite a distance.
Whoever is doing the driving is a hair on the haphazard side as we get to see more than one suitcase fly off of the rack willy nilly into the countryside, one mailbox on the road askew, and upon arrival, same driver pulls up a wee bit too close to the fence, apparently abruptly, causing the rest of the luggage to fly thru’ the air, the picket fence now tilting toward the house. (Any of you who’ve seen the movie with Chevy Chase, Christmas Vacation, can probably envision this story!)
Upon the relatives’ arrival, the hugging begins. (I’m telling you the illustrations are priceless.). Any of you who know my friend, Nancy Aguiar, who gives the best hugs on the planet, well, she should be in this book. Nancy, HURRY BACK TO KENTUCKY!!!
Pictured here are the Butter Babes. This was taken after we kidnapped Judy for a milestone bday celebrated at the Castle in Versailles, KY. Left to right, around the table, are: Yours Truly, Cousin Bonnie, Judy, Fay, and Nancy the Hugging Evangelist.
Favorite sentence:
One major difference in the book’s relatives and our relatives is the book’s relatives “stayed for weeks and weeks.” Oh dear….but you’ll see how they more or less earn their keep and, you don’t want to miss how they do this, again in the most delightful variety of illustrations!
Our relatives usually just stayed for the weekend and our big “light-at-the end-of-the-tunnel” was my Aunt and Uncle from New Jersey always treated all of us to dinner out on Friday after Thanksgiving. Whatever city we were in, June (another one of my Mother’s sisters!) and Mac always found a lovely restaurant. Even after their passing, my cousin Russ (their son) and his wife, Sue, treated us. That was a favorite tradition for sure.
HERE ARE ALL FOUR OF THE SISTERS:
Pictured from Left to Right: My Mom, Anita, my Aunt Bem, my Aunt Louise, and my Aunt June. These girls were a hoot when they were together.
My prayer for you is,
“May your week of Thanksgiving be filled with delicious, mouth-watering food,
and your time with your relatives peaceful,
with new memories made to savor.
May you ‘hunt and gather’ to decrease your stress (and cooking!),and
May you stash some chocolate somewhere to preserve your sanity, and
May you and your family have a most blessed and humor-filled Thanksgiving!”
Hint: For survival this week, maybe tape these verses to your bathroom mirror:
Philippians 4:4-9 gently reminds us to:
Now run, don’t walk, to your nearest bookstore and snag The Relatives Came. It never hurts to have some humor in your back pocket.
‘Til next time!
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