Don't Let Uninvited Guests Ruin Your Thanksgiving Dinner

My Grandparent's house holds a very special place in our family's history. Four generations of our family have lived in that house and as an adult it is now my home. Grandma's house was the gathering point for my family for all of our special occasions and holidays. No matter how big the family got we always found a way to fit everyone inside. This sometimes got a little tricky though, especially at Thanksgiving. As more grandchildren and cousins were added to the family, more card tables had to be set up. One of my fondest memories of Thanksgiving at Grandma's came right after I had graduated from the card table in the kitchen to the larger card table in the dining room. I was still at a kid's table, technically, but now at least I was in the same room as the adults. What made this Thanksgiving even more memorable though wasn't the new seating arrangement, it was the unexpected visitor we had for dinner.

We had just sat down for dinner which usually was a process in itself, getting twenty some people situated at the various tables throughout the house. Grandma and an aunt or two were still busy shuffling various dishes to the table from the kitchen and I was trying to swipe pickles of the relish tray. That's when it, our unexpected visitor, arrived. Actually it had probably been there for quite some time, but it was today, Thanksgiving, that it decided to make an appearance. It swooped in through the living room, dive bombed the table in the dining room and vanished into the kitchen. I knew it went to the kitchen because I heard the cranberry dish crash to the floor as my aunt screamed. Of course my aunt shrieking in the kitchen sent the two kiddy tables, also located in the kitchen, into a panic. A card table leg was kicked sending a landslide of divider style Styrofoam plates and milk cups toppling to the floor. On the bright side though, the munchkins were so petrified that they never moved form their little seats in the kitchen. This probably prevented a great deal of sweat potatoes and gravy from finding its' way onto Grandma's carpet.

In the dining room men and the older boys scrambled from their seats in a nervous excitement. Each began to search for the preferred tool of choice, which in Grandma's house was a tennis racket. Cries of where is it, where did it go resounded through the downstairs in both hopes of finding it and hopes of avoiding it. My mom began to clumsily try and clean up a spill as she kept her eyes scanning the doorways for a reemergence. My father stayed sitting at the table buttering a role. I later understood the difference in behaviors between my parents being directly related to one parent having grown up in the house and the other being a relative outsider to such occurrences. I grabbed another pickle from the relish tray, I really liked pickles, and with a placemat over my head mostly for psychological protection I joined in the hunt.

After only a few minutes the culprit of all this disruption was cornered in an upstairs bedroom. Various doors were shut throughout the house to prevent an escape and moms tried to comfort the kids as they felt relatively assured the crises would soon be over. My uncle and two of my older cousins, armed with their rackets, stormed the room like some raggedy SWAT unit. The door was slammed behind them and all that could be detected was their feeble attempts to alleviate the problem. I again later learned through personal experience that one thinks he is brave until confronted face to face with the beast. While seemingly small while grounded, upon taking flight they become ravenous pterodactyl sized creatures of legendary proportion. That and it is also easier to do a job like this alone and with your eyes open rather then to attempt to subdue the enemy while tripping over others in the dark.

After seemingly many minutes of desiring another pickle from the relish tray and the emergence of only one of my cousins from the bedroom, I realized this standoff was not going to end soon. I was about to take matters into my own hands and had just replaced the placemat on my head with my Houston Oilers football helmet when Grandma came up the stairs. Armed with only a dishrag and a jar she entered the battle. And just like that it was over. The other cousin and my uncle came defeated from the bedroom holding their tennis rackets low and their heads even lower. Grandma emerged from the room and her simple words rang through the house, "Back to the Table."

The joy of Thanksgiving soon returned and food was again being served. My placemat was back on the card table although my mother, to my dismay, had removed the relish dish. Talk of football and school were conversational pieces with only the occasional glance given towards the ceiling. We did though have to squeeze the two little kiddy card tables from the kitchen into the living room for the sake of the youngsters and the sanity of the family as a whole. The rest of the meal went by without a hitch.

Soon dinner and dessert were over and I soon found myself on the front porch staring at the menace which was now secluded in the glass jar. It would remain there until evening when Grandma would release it. Even today I find those little creatures disgustingly ugly and even today I wonder how Grandma, armed only with a dish cloth, was able to secure that flying rodent which evaded everyone else in that little glass jar. After years of living in this house myself, and after dealing with this same ordeal more times than I can remember, I still do not know how she caught that bat and got it into that jar. I have simply come to believe that it was Grandma's love for her family that persuaded the little bugger into the jar because nothing was going to ruin Grandma's Thanksgiving dinner.