Awful food but unbreakable family bonds

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 21: I come from a long line of miserable Irish cooks. I mean it; we’re absolutely useless.

Unless you like your meat overcooked and your vegetables yellow from being submerged in boiling water for hours, you may as well forget eating at my place.

Nutrients we never heard of but nitrates were just fine. On my return home each day from a rotten day at school, I was filled with even more dread wondering what, in the name of all that is holy, we would be eating for dinner.

One only had to look at the condition of the kitchen windows to know what was going on. 

Condensation meant a boiled dinner; clear windows meant anyone’s guess. One thing was for certain, no one would be asking for seconds. 

I have eaten more potatoes in more ways than I can count. Mostly mashed, often times boiled, I don’t think there was ever a meal without them. Those were the days when everyone called dinner ‘supper’ and we sat around the dinner table and talked — really talked.

In our family, smart and funny was the currency. There were countless noisy arguments over politics — those were the Vietnam years — arguments over whose turn it was to empty the dishwasher or take out the trash, and arguments over the length of my brother’s hair.

We argued about whose turn it was to babysit our kid sister and we argued about why my curfew was earlier than my brother’s. ‘Call-waiting’ hadn’t been invented yet, so we argued about why I spent too much time on the phone tying up the line when I should have been doing my homework.

We argued about when I would be able to wear my first pair of ‘nylons’ instead of tights and when it would be an appropriate age to shave my legs. (Immediately if not sooner would have been my advice).

We argued about what time we were meant to be at Mass each Sunday and then we argued about what priest said the shortest Mass so that we could get out of church as quickly as possible.

When a boy finally walked me home from a school dance one Saturday night, my mother and I argued about why she stood at the front door flicking the lights on and off, signalling for me to come inside the house. No daughter of hers would be standing outside talking to a boy, never mind anything else! My first kiss would have to wait.

We argued about the steady stream of phone calls made by our perpetually irritated neighbour, Mrs Tierney, who always claimed she had a headache from all the noise.

We argued about whose fault it really was when my brother plowed into Mrs McNiff’s front hedge during a snowstorm. We both agreed it was hers since she didn’t get out of the way as we went into a skid. “Didn’t it make sense,” my brother argued, “not to hit Mrs McNiff?”

My father, not the least bit pleased with our explanation, paid the bill. My mother cried when my brother broke her enormous Waterford vase with a hockey stick and she pretty much cried every time he broke something in our house with a hockey stick. “…the Hummels too? Can’t I ever have anything nice in this house?”

I think my father almost cried when he test-drove a yellow Mustang home for her approval. He thought she’d fall for it. She didn’t.

But if I were to stand outside the house where I grew up, I would only hear laughter. I would only hear the concern in my mother and father’s voice when one of us was sick or if we were late returning home. As long as you returned home safe and sound, nothing else mattered, including life’s scrapes and victories.

This Thanksgiving, far from home and with my own two girls far from my home, I’ll recall those spectacular days. We were a family.

I’ll be up to my elbows in the backside of a turkey trying to put on a meal that I am unqualified to cook. I hope I don’t overdo the vegetables but I don’t think that it will matter. It’s never been about the food, just the love.

Pass the salt and Happy Thanksgiving!