Fall Of The Patriarch

Soccer Mom 2.0

by John Christmann

It is Thanksgiving. After I say a few words of thanks, 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.

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. I am also the last thing that stands between the alluring aroma of a table brimming with food and a roomful of deprived taste buds on life support. My kids roll their eyes.

My youngest 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 oldest son. “Can we eat now?”
And then my wife adds, “I am thankful you are sitting at the head of the table! Can you jump up and get the gravy?” Everyone laughs.

My 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 grand kids 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 anyway?

My wife and I stopped joining our parents for Thanksgiving shortly after our children were born. We just lived too far away. And we wanted to start our own Thanksgiving tradition. So we hosted some of my wife’s relatives who lived closer. That first Thanksgiving on our own I called up my Dad in a panic. The bird was out of the oven. It was glowing warm and brown and sitting on a big wooden cutting board. It looked imposing, like a mountain.
“Dad, quick, how do you carve a turkey?”
He responded in his calm and reassuring voice. “With a carving knife,” he said.

All I knew about carving knives was that they were the instruments used by the farmer’s wife to cut off the tails of blind rodents. But it seemed to make sense.
“Thanks Dad!” I said, hanging up before he could finish. I grabbed a giant meat cleaver out of the drawer, drew it high over my head, and aimed for the leg.

A few years later, after I invested in a very sharp set of knives, we were able to convince some of my in-laws to return to our home for Thanksgiving. And we also added a few stragglers—friends who were not able to be with their own families. Every year now there are different faces at our table, but it feels right for us. My parents spend Thanksgiving in Hawaii presiding over a feast of pineapple chicken and Mai Tais. My sister is with a smattering of her in-laws—they rotate houses from year to year. We all have our traditions, but somehow it feels like a patriarchy without a patriarch.

It wasn’t always this way. Before he died, my great grandfather presided over a thriving Thanksgiving household with relations that spanned two full generations. The women, including my grandmother and my elderly great aunts, ran the household. Wearing aprons and baking mitts they forged great feasts in the kitchen. To enter their domain was to enter a chaotic sauna of boiled vegetables and roasting turkeys and fresh bread and pies pulled out of hot ovens to cool. The aroma pulled the kids in. The aunts shooed them all out. And when dinner was served, my grandfather took out a set of bone-handled carving knives and neatly sliced the turkey. The thin pieces tumbled off the large bird in curling wisps of steam. He could have been carving for Norman Rockwell.

My great grandfather, always the perfect gentleman, sat silently at the head of the table in a starched white western style shirt and a bolo 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, almost as if he was preparing a nice pillow to drop into. And after a couple of glasses of wine, it appeared that he might just use it. When his eyes began to roll back under their lids the overly attentive aunts jumped up and hovered around him, snapping him back into consciousness. “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 slight pause, let it drop full force onto the table. All around the 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,” he said.

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 would have me believe. But it does give me pause to think that when I truly become an old timer, I may never get the chance to augustly embarrass myself at a Thanksgiving dinner table occupied by my grown children and all of the wild and rambunctious grand children of my imagination. But I suppose 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 liquid 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?” giggles my son, reaching for the large serving bowl in front of him. Now the whole table laughs.

The words of my great grandfather seem all too appropriate, but I bite my tongue. I am, after all, just a patriarch in training.
“Bring them on,” I say, “It’s Thanksgiving!” And I proudly take my seat at the head of the table.