Read Online Blue Plate Special by Kate Christensen - Free Book Online
Authors: Kate Christensen
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was a long table full of the food everyone had brought. Suddenly, we were all pseudohippies again; it was a comforting thing for us Berkeley-bred, culture-shocked kids. I remember feeling right at home there with the crowd of long-haired grown-ups in tie-dyed skirts, beards, and granny glasses. The other kids seemed familiar, too, more like us, somehow, than the other kids we knew in Arizona.
The food was the usual hippie stuff—vegetarian, heavy on the legumes, grains, nuts, and root vegetables. But there was no turkey. My family had never celebrated Thanksgiving with traditional dinners. As my mother put it, “It was the sixties and we were rebelling against turkey. Sorry you missed out on all that tryptophan!”
So we spent a perfectly nice day hanging out with some of the Arizona counterculture, and then later that night, we went home to Wildermuth, back to our Arizona desert life with theblack widow spiders in the carport, the broom handle in our sliding glass door groove to keep intruders out, our swamp cooler, our cornfield.
The following Thanksgiving, we drove all the way up to “the snow”—this was a rarity for us, a luxurious and strange new thing. My mother’s friends, two couples, Rich and Vangie and Steve and Debbie, organized a trip to Hannagan Meadow Lodge, nine thousand feet up in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in the far eastern part of Arizona.
We all stayed together in a cabin with a front porch stacked with firewood and a big living room with a stone fireplace. We kids didn’t have any coats warmer than light jackets, since we had never needed them before, but I remember my mother cobbling together some sweaters and knitted hats and mittens for us all. We spent all day outside, making snowballs and snow angels, running and shrieking around the vast forest meadows, and then we came back into the cabin and warmed up by the big fireplace, the tips of our ears and noses tingling, and our pants legs steaming as the snow evaporated.
On Thanksgiving Day, we all sat at a long table in the lodge dining room. “White meat or dark,” the smiling waitress asked, going all the way down the table and back up again and writing it on her pad. “Dark,” I said decisively when it was my turn, having no idea what it meant. The grown-ups drank wine, the fire blazed. I was sitting at the other end of the table from my mother and sisters, so I was quiet, listening to the grown-ups talking, eagerly awaiting my dinner. I was starving, as I always was, in those days, but the cold air had made my appetite even keener and more urgent. The plates started coming out, and they were loaded, laden, piled high with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and vegetables. I was mesmerized.
The people on either side of me got their food; the people across from me got theirs. Everyone started helping themselves to cranberry sauce and gravy. I figured they’d all asked for lightmeat, and the dark meat probably took longer because it had to cook more, so I waited. And waited, and waited, until finally I realized that everyone else was eating, I’d been forgotten, and I had to speak up for myself because my mother was all the way at the other end of the table.
I raised my hand high and looked at the waitress, of course, since every schoolchild knew that was how you got a grown-up’s attention. She came over to me and leaned over. “Yes, hon?”
“I think … you forgot my food,” I said, mortified. I’d been hoping she’d just see my empty place mat and bring me my plate without making me explain myself. I hated calling attention to myself, hated being pitied or worried about.
But of course all the grown-ups around me immediately put their forks down and made noises of sympathy and concern.
“Laurie, let me give you some turkey!”
“Here, Laurie, I’ve got enough for both of us.”
“It’s okay,” I said through a knot of fierce pride that stuck in my throat. Absurdly, I was on the verge of tears, but it
The food was the usual hippie stuff—vegetarian, heavy on the legumes, grains, nuts, and root vegetables. But there was no turkey. My family had never celebrated Thanksgiving with traditional dinners. As my mother put it, “It was the sixties and we were rebelling against turkey. Sorry you missed out on all that tryptophan!”
So we spent a perfectly nice day hanging out with some of the Arizona counterculture, and then later that night, we went home to Wildermuth, back to our Arizona desert life with theblack widow spiders in the carport, the broom handle in our sliding glass door groove to keep intruders out, our swamp cooler, our cornfield.
The following Thanksgiving, we drove all the way up to “the snow”—this was a rarity for us, a luxurious and strange new thing. My mother’s friends, two couples, Rich and Vangie and Steve and Debbie, organized a trip to Hannagan Meadow Lodge, nine thousand feet up in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in the far eastern part of Arizona.
We all stayed together in a cabin with a front porch stacked with firewood and a big living room with a stone fireplace. We kids didn’t have any coats warmer than light jackets, since we had never needed them before, but I remember my mother cobbling together some sweaters and knitted hats and mittens for us all. We spent all day outside, making snowballs and snow angels, running and shrieking around the vast forest meadows, and then we came back into the cabin and warmed up by the big fireplace, the tips of our ears and noses tingling, and our pants legs steaming as the snow evaporated.
On Thanksgiving Day, we all sat at a long table in the lodge dining room. “White meat or dark,” the smiling waitress asked, going all the way down the table and back up again and writing it on her pad. “Dark,” I said decisively when it was my turn, having no idea what it meant. The grown-ups drank wine, the fire blazed. I was sitting at the other end of the table from my mother and sisters, so I was quiet, listening to the grown-ups talking, eagerly awaiting my dinner. I was starving, as I always was, in those days, but the cold air had made my appetite even keener and more urgent. The plates started coming out, and they were loaded, laden, piled high with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and vegetables. I was mesmerized.
The people on either side of me got their food; the people across from me got theirs. Everyone started helping themselves to cranberry sauce and gravy. I figured they’d all asked for lightmeat, and the dark meat probably took longer because it had to cook more, so I waited. And waited, and waited, until finally I realized that everyone else was eating, I’d been forgotten, and I had to speak up for myself because my mother was all the way at the other end of the table.
I raised my hand high and looked at the waitress, of course, since every schoolchild knew that was how you got a grown-up’s attention. She came over to me and leaned over. “Yes, hon?”
“I think … you forgot my food,” I said, mortified. I’d been hoping she’d just see my empty place mat and bring me my plate without making me explain myself. I hated calling attention to myself, hated being pitied or worried about.
But of course all the grown-ups around me immediately put their forks down and made noises of sympathy and concern.
“Laurie, let me give you some turkey!”
“Here, Laurie, I’ve got enough for both of us.”
“It’s okay,” I said through a knot of fierce pride that stuck in my throat. Absurdly, I was on the verge of tears, but it
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