My father's family is relatively small. His parents each have only one sibling, and he has two siblings. In addition, my father’s siblings are significantly younger than he is. His brother Larry is 12 years younger and his sister Linda is 14 years younger. My own parents married at ages 19 (mother) and 21 (father) respectively. They started having children immediately. Consequently, Larry is closer in age to my older brother Jeff than to my dad, and Linda is closer in age to me. When I was a child, they were teenagers, babysitters and playmates.
Like most couples, my parents had to arrange their holiday time with their respective parents and birth families, so we spent different Thanksgivings at different grandparents’ homes. While she may have alternated Thanksgiving dinners between her two children right after Richard Eckman died in 1963, once she moved into the senior facility in 1972, her Thanksgivings were spent with her daughter Vivian’s—my—family.
Those dinners (in fact, all family meals in the Metzker household) went something like this:
We had an afternoon meal for which my grandmother Vivian, with the help of her daughter Linda, did all of the preparations. While she baked cookies and other treats, no one can seem to remember whether or not she made the pies (my mother’s specialty), although we had them.
We would eat at the large cherry wood dining room table, using both the good china and silver. Each of us had our assigned places. My grandfather Ed would sit at the head of the table; to his right, nearest the kitchen sat my grandmother Vivian. Next to her sat Linda, then Leta, and then Larry (until his relationship with his high school sweetheart moved into long-term—engagement and marriage—when she sat there. Her name is Linda; we call her Linda Jo). When Linda Jo joined the family, Larry moved around to the foot of the table. My father Don always sat at the foot of the table. Coming from the foot to the head up the opposite side from my grandmother were my siblings and I—Jeff closest to Don, then me in the middle, then Michelle closest to our mother Pat, who sat at my grandfather’s left.
Grandmother Vivian or Grandfather Ed would carve the turkey in the kitchen, and she would serve it on a large platter. We also had all of the standard Ohio fixings: stuffing (in the turkey and also cooked separately), mashed potatoes and gravy, noodles, corn, Waldorf salad, cranberry sauce (jellied from a can), rolls and sweet potatoes. (Our family sweet potatoes were boiled, peeled, sliced into large chunks, and then sautéed in butter and brown sugar.) Because it was a holiday, all of the kids got a small taste of sweet wine.
For dessert, we had our choice of usually three kinds of pie: pumpkin of course, cherry (my father Don’s favorite) and mincemeat (the American version—that is, with fruit in it).
After eating, the women would clean up and do the dishes, while the men went into the living room to watch football. Don would invariably fall asleep (unless he was working that day—he was a police officer). My sister and I would occupy ourselves until it was time for Grandmother Vivian to play with us. She taught us a game we only played on holidays. It involved playing cards and chips (or pennies—she had a stash of them in a jar and would let us keep whatever we ended with), and was simple and elaborate at the same time. At about 5:30 p.m., we’d have turkey sandwiches and then, shortly thereafter, completely stuffed and thoroughly happy, we’d go home.
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