I’m sure you had some of these in your family. My mom always wanted to put her best foot forward, so there were set procedures in place for holiday foods, table setting etc. More on that in a moment.
Early on, my mom packed my lunch for school. I was never surprised by my sandwiches though some other kids were. For some reason my mom would go through a cream cheese phase from time to time. Neither my brother nor I were fussy eaters so she had some fun.
Cream cheese and jelly was a nice break from traditional pb&j though I enjoyed pb&j especially if it contained grape jelly. Cream cheese and olives was another favorite. I can remember watching my mom spoon a little of the olive brine over the cream cheese to soften it up a bit. The most unusual cream cheese sandwich offering was when she mixed chopped walnuts with the cream cheese, then sprinkled a little cinnamon-sugar mix on top.
I’ve always been the type of eater who likes odd combinations. On the subject of cream cheese, blobs of cream cheese would appear in our soup when we were kids. We had this set of small plastic trays that fit a sandwich and had an area for a bowl or glass. My mom would often use that spot to place one of the white petal-shaped bowls she used to serve soup (Campbell’s mostly). Any of the following soups could be served with a tablespoon of cream cheese floating in it: tomato, pea, squash. As it melted, the soup became a little creamier and savory tasting. Happy memories.
Back to other traditions…when we were an intact family of four, Thanksgiving usually included my father’s parents. The extra leaf would be added to the dining room table and the crinkling of plastic indicated the good tablecloth was being unpackaged from its trip to the dry cleaner.
My most important job prior to holiday dinners was to polish the silver. Forks were the most difficult to do because of the tines. We used salad, dinner, and dessert forks. Lots of forks. Lots of polishing. Lots of grumbling.
I set the table with care. Thanks to our World Book Encyclopedia, I’d looked up how to set the table properly. I was five. What was my problem? Nothing. I loved to read the encyclopedia. I knew where certain dishes went, blah, blah, blah. Add to it that I was a left-handed kid in a right-handed world and had to visualize it in the opposite way in my head. The electric knife rested at my father’s seat for when he carved the turkey. Dessert plates and forks were stacked neatly along with fresh spoons for coffee.
I enjoyed those traditions, no matter how much I complained about polishing the silver. I trot out the china and silver on occasion. Polishing the silver is still a despised chore. But I like tradition and history and the warmth of the memories.
“Love when you can/Cry when you have to/Be who you must/That’s a part of the plan…” Dan Fogelberg
Stories Are For Eternity 