I am finally feeling better, thank you to everyone who posted to me with well wishes. It took about a week but I can finally talk again. I still feel like I could take a nap everyday, but I am back to my old cheerful self again. I have been browsing around on the web checking out blogs, but I have not felt much like posting lately.
Sleepyjane posted the other day about Christmas. Less than two months until it’s the holidays again. Where has this year gone? I am not nearly excited about Christmas as I used to be. I believe I commented in Sleepyjane’s post that Christmas was ruined for me the year my mother faked Christmas dinner. I’m sure that is part of it, as I was appalled that she would do such a thing. The other fact is, two years ago, after what I was told was the perfect Christmas, Mike walked out the door and a week later informed me that we were getting divorced.
But I digress, let me explain the details behind the Great Fake Christmas of 2006. I love to cook. What I enjoy even more is cooking for other people. So for Thanksgiving that year I invited the family over to my house and went all out. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, carrots, green beans, and a homemade pumpkin pie with homemade whipped cream. It was a beautiful thing and took me the better part of two days (as I started the Wednesday before Thanksgiving) to create and probably only 30 minutes for the family to destroy. Either way, I loved every minute of it. At the end of the meal we were talking about what to do for Christmas dinner and my mom said that she would host and cook so I didn’t have to do it again. We were going to have a brown sugar, spiral cut ham. Oh my mouth is watering just thinking about it.
Fast forward to Christmas that year. My mom’s house looked spectacular, she’d sewed a new table runner, made a flower arrangement and had made us these neat cranberry spritzers as before dinner drinks. Everything was in the oven and I was helping her set the table. We all sat down to eat, and it was pretty good. Not great, as my mom hasn’t ever been a fantastic cook, but she did the best she could. I learned to cook from my grandma Margaret, which I am thankful for every day. We sat around the table talking a little bit and letting all our food settle down before cleaning up. My brother, Steve and my step-father retired to the livingroom to watch TV while mom and I cleaned up the kitchen. I was impressed as she did quite a bit of cleaning as she made dinner so there wasn’t much to do.
I went into the laundry room to scrape some scraps into the trash when I saw a white box. “What’s this?” I called out to my mother in the kitchen as I picked up the box. “Oh it’s nothing,” she said “I got something in the mail the other day.”
I turned the box over and that’s when I saw the little scan tag. It said “1 complete spiral ham dinner.”
“Mooooooooooom” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Did you buy a complete Christmas dinner?
“Of course dear, I bought all the ingredients.”
“No, I mean did you buy a whole, precooked dinner, the type that would come in this type of box?” I waved it accusingly under her nose.
“Umm…ahh” she didn’t know what to say.
I stormed into the livingroom with the evidence in my hand. “Look!” I demanded. All heads turned in my direction and the attention was on me. “Mom faked Christmas dinner. She reheated food that had already been made at Kroger and tried to pass it off as her own!”
My step-father gave me a patronizing smile. “We wanted to have a nice Christmas dinner without all the trouble and effort.”
I think Steve just shrugged. Food was food in his mind. I’m sure he was so full he’d cut the blood circulation off to his brain anyway.
I’m pretty sure at this point I was hyperventilating, but thankfully had not started to cry. I was rather dramatic when I said “You have ruined Christmas dinner for me!” I stomped into the kitchen, put the box back where I found it, and sulked in the livingroom. “You weren’t meant to find the box, dear.” my mother kindly reminded me of her deception “If you weren’t snooping around you would never have known and would have enjoyed a perfectly lovely Christmas dinner.” I think I responded to that by sticking out my tongue and blowing her a raspberry.
So that’s the story. Christmas has never been the same since, and every year I remind my mother of it. I think my problem with the whole charade was that there was no effort put in. Isn’t that the point, in between the togetherness and the spirit of giving, that you put effort into your dinner because it’s a way of showing your loved ones that you care about them? Who knows, maybe I’m just upset because of the effort it took me to make Thanksgiving dinner, I felt short changed for Christmas dinner. Or maybe, deep down I’m just jealous that I didn’t think of it first!
