The temperatures are dropping and the holidays are nearly here. It’s the time of year when families trek across the state or country in order to come together and enjoy each other’s company. Delayed flights and bumper-to-bumper traffic are mere hindrances.
Long and laborious hours await many as they prepare feasts for their household. Basting turkeys, mashing potatoes and baking pies to perfection before spending almost as much time cleaning up after them.
We all do this every year, but why? From the perspective of my family, this is because it is in my DNA.
My grandmother is the glue that holds our family together, everything we have is because of her and the sacrifices she made for our family to have a better life. When I was younger, it was an unspoken rule that Thanksgiving and Christmas would be held at my grandma’s home. Since my family is Jamaican, the dishes served would differ from the norm.
Instead of preparing turkey and stuffing, there would be Oxtail with rice and peas. In place of eggnog would be Sorrel, which is a drink made from spices, fruits and the hibiscus flower. My grandma would wake up before sunrise and cook everything herself.
No matter how many people attempted to help her, she insisted on doing it all. Her reply would always be “A guest is not meant to work for their host.” We were her guests and she was our host.
It is only as I have become an adult do I understand the reasoning behind my grandma’s decision. Her love language is acts of service and she knew she was not getting any younger. While she still was able to, she wanted to take care of her family in the same way that we take care of her.
Cooking also made her feel useful. My grandma was the caregiver for many years of her husband and her mother. They passed away not long before the tradition of Thanksgiving and Christmas held at her house began.
My grandmother was in mourning: her grief was not only the loss of the two most important people in her life but of a place in time that no longer existed. A place in time when her three children, whom she devoted the majority of her life to raising and taking care of were now grown and had children of their own.
She was mourning the end of a period of time when she was needed by everyone around her. Cooking for her family was the only way left where she felt essential.
Her food was her way of saying she loved us and showing us what she wasn’t able to put into words.
As she got older and the family kept growing, we ran out of space for everyone to fit in her house comfortably and decided that the torch should be passed on to someone else. My father gladly took that position.
My dad is a chef and has no problem cooking for large groups of people at any time. In fact, I would say my dad is at his happiest when he is in the kitchen cooking and everyone is enjoying his food.
In more recent years, we’ve created a mashup of dishes for the holidays. We now have traditional dishes served alongside an array of Jamaican food. He has taken on this enormous task with glee and looks forward to it every year.
When the job was first passed to the next generation, my grandma wasn’t the happiest camper. With time she understood it was not to make her feel worthless, but instead that it was time we gave back to her as a means of saying thank you.
My dad recognized this better than anyone. He is famous for not letting anyone into the kitchen while he is cooking, except for grandma.
While everyone else is away watching TV or sitting in the backyard, he and grandma talk. Though he may have been a professional chef for over a decade, he greatly values his mom’s advice. After all, everything he knows stems from her.
That is their bonding time, and it is my dad’s way of expressing his appreciation for the things his mother has done for him.
When the feast is done and it’s time to present the meal to the family, my dad always has grandma stand by his side. She may not have cooked the food, but the love that flows through it comes from her just as much as him.
Food in my household is more than nourishment. It represents our ties to our culture, our love for one another and most importantly our ability to connect with our past as well as our future.
Life is short. My grandma turned 82 last month and is thankfully doing well physically and mentally. I don’t know how many more holiday seasons I’ll have with her, but I know that I’ll cherish each one a little more than the last.