She'll be there

I come from a large extended family, both on my father’s and my mother’s sides. While many people dread spending time with relatives, especially large groups of them in smaller than ideal spaces, I relish it. 

My appreciation for my extended family could stem from the fact that I grew up with my grandparents and the majority of my aunts, uncles and cousins close by, as close as next door or a few streets away. Adding to the close proximity of my family is the fact they are awesome people. 

While every family has to negotiate the delicate which-side-of-the-family-will-we-celebrate-with-this-year issue, over the last few decades Thanksgiving has traditionally been celebrated with my maternal family. Even if not everyone in the extended family arrived for 1:00 lunch, they would trickle into my parents’ house after their lunch or early dinners celebrated with the other side of their families, for Haley Thanksgiving.

Card games were played, karaoke songs belted out, sometimes in tune, often not, and inevitably, my dad would invent some new word as he loudly expressed his opinions on politics, religion or pop culture. Some of my favorites: when he was talking about that “Harvey Bolito” song you hear at church—known to everyone else as “Ave Maria”—or when he proclaimed the automation in Lion King to be incredible. We even started Bob’s Thesaurus to keep track of his malapropisms.

As the years passed, adopted members of the family would join us. My brother’s friends and mine would come join in the festivities, and then some cousins’ friends began to follow suit. One of my favorite “adopted Haley” moments was when my cousin Tommy’s friend Dave brought his guitar. We stood around him joining in the chorus of Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction,” which then lead to more sing-alongs. A family favorite? Feliz Navidad. It was such a favorite, that if we got together at different times in the year, we would still sing it loud, even in the dead of the summer.

Ma's apple tree, with Tommy back on top.

But at the core of it all was my grandmother, Ma. She was the center to which we were all pulled. We all wanted to be the apple of Ma’s eye—and the top of her Grandmother apple tree. There is a running joke about the favorite grandchild in our family. Ma had a wooden plaque with the painting of an apple tree. Each apple had a grandchild’s name. As we were born, we were placed on the apple tree, with eldest grandchild's apple, my cousin Tommy,  proudly hanging at the top.

Tommy’s participation in a semester abroad in England coincided with my Ma re-wallpapering her dining room. To match the new wallpaper, my mother took the tree home, repainted it, and repainted the grandchildren by family rather than birth-order. Tommy returned to the States to find he had been demoted from top apple. We began competing, trying to give the best gifts or succumbing to brown-nosing in general for the chance to be top apple. Tommy went so far as to write her a song one Christmas which was performed that Christmas Eve, and many Christmases, Thanksgivings, Mother’s Days, and random family gatherings after the fact.

Ma, our matriarch

The last time we all sang the Ma Song was in February at her funeral collation.

This will be our first Thanksgiving without Ma. It’s just starting to hit me that she won’t be sitting in my parents’ kitchen when I walk over after I have my Thanksgiving lunch with my in-laws. Her peanut butter cups and apple pie will not be sitting on the counter, waiting for us to attack. The low hum that she used to unknowingly emit will not fill the gaps in conversation.

She won’t be sitting there, but she’ll be there. She’ll be in the stories we’ll tell and the memories we’ll share. She’ll be there in the recipes cooked—they won’t be Ma’s peanut butter cups or apple pie, but someone will have stepped up to fill the space on the counter with her confectionary goodness. She’ll be there in the pieces of herself she’s handed down to each of us.

For me, she’ll be there in my love of the written word and Emerald Isle, the slope of my nose and the blue of my eyes, the laughter, the love, and the joy of being with family.

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Below: Tommy performing the Ma Song. I apologize in advance for my cousin Dan's tone deaf singing and the not-with-the-beat clapping half way through. ; )