Humor by John Christmann
The Fall Of The Patriarch
It is Thanksgiving. I feel somewhat imperious because I am sitting at the head of the table occupied by an assortment of relatives and friends who have joined us for the holiday. After I say a few words, I look up at my kids who are fidgeting impatiently at the far end of the dinner table.
“Tell me something you are thankful for today,” I say before I allow them to eat from a table brimming with tantalizing food. They roll their eyes impatiently.
My younger son goes first. “I am thankful that Dad didn’t cook anything today,” he announces.
“I am thankful that I don’t have to wear hats and shoes with buckles on them,” says my daughter.
“I am thankful I’m not a turkey,” says my older son. “Can we eat now?”
And then my wife adds, “I am thankful you are sitting closest to the kitchen! Can you jump up and get the gravy?”
My brief run as respected patriarch has come to a quick and ignoble end.
Or maybe it never really got started. It seems that nowadays, the family patriarch who presides authoritatively over large clan gatherings is a bygone relic. Families today are more insular and far-flung than they used to be. Traditional family holidays like Thanksgiving seldom include the full compliment of aunts and uncles and cousins and bored grandkids gathered around a big table with an elderly man sitting stoically at its head. Logistically it is difficult—no one has that many tables and chairs, let alone silver salad forks—and who in their right mind wants to cook for that many people?
It wasn’t always this way. Before he died, my great grandfather presided over a thriving Thanksgiving household with relations that spanned three generations. The women, including my grandmother and my elderly great aunts, ran the household and meticulously prepared the food.
My great grandfather, always the perfect gentleman, sat silently at the head of the table in a starched white shirt and a tie. Whenever his plate started to empty one of the aunts would jump up and glop on another large spoonful of mashed potatoes.
After a time, he would wave his hands and respond politely, “Please, no more.” But the aunts were relentless. Holiday dinners for them were a forced death march of food.
One Thanksgiving, he tried to thwart their efforts by pushing the mashed potatoes into a large mound as if he was preparing a soft pillow. After a couple of glasses of wine, his eyes began to roll back under their lids. Seizing the opportunity, the overly attentive aunts jumped up and hovered around him.
“Some more green beans, Dad? How about some stuffing, there is plenty here. Oh, you could use some more mashed potatoes . . .” Again he pushed his hands out asking them to halt, and again another large dollop of potatoes plopped onto his plate.
Then, as if he were summoning divine power, he lifted his hand high into the air and after a brief pause, let it drop full force onto the table. All around silverware jumped and clattered noisily on the plates. Conversation ceased and everyone turned toward him in astonishment. With his fist clenched tight on the table, the great patriarch spoke slowly and clearly: " I don’t want no more goddamn mashed potatoes."
And with that, he tilted his head back and went to sleep in his chair at the head of the table while my aunts turned their attention to more pressing matters: “All righty. Who wants pie?”
It occurs to me that I have solid credentials to be a great patriarch. I am old, cranky, and am not above dropping my head into a pile of mashed potatoes at the dinner table after a couple of beers. At least this is what my kids tell me.
But I worry that when I become an old-timer, I may never get the chance to authoritatively embarrass myself at a Thanksgiving dinner table occupied by my grown children and all of the wild and rambunctious grandchildren of my imagination.
I guess patriarchs are a lot like a second helpings of mashed potatoes, they should never be forced on anybody.
I return from the kitchen carrying a very hot bowl of gravy. As I enter the dining room the thick hot goo sloshes out of the gravy boat onto my pressed white shirt. My kids burst out laughing. “How about some more mashed potatoes for your shirt, Dad?”
The words of my great grandfather seem all too appropriate, but I bite my tongue. I am, after all, just a patriarch-in-training stained with nothing but things to be thankful for. “Bring those bad boy potatoes on,” I say, “It’s Thanksgiving!”
And I proudly take my seat at the head of the table.
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