This is going to be my longest post, I suspect. But it is the foundation for everything to come. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy.
I’ve spent Xmas Eve every year of my life at Grandma Ruby’s house.
Grandma Ruby lives in a classic 1940s home in a modest suburb of Minneapolis. The best way to describe her? A no-nonsense, farm-raised, divorced Swedish Athiest. Kind. Live & let live. Born in 1915 she was an independent woman ahead of her time, making her own living as a seamstress for 7 decades. Xmas Eve supper wasone of the few cultural/religious traditions Grandma Ruby upheld, I think, for the ‘sake of the kids.’ Dala horses and Christmas plates adorned the dining room table. The adults drank Asti Spumante or apricot brandy. We all cracked nuts and jokes until dinner was near.
My first memory of this annual event dates back to 1982. Tiny me, at just the preschool age when I started to assert my independence. ‘I can do it myself’ was my mantra, and I exhibited this by completing the very important daily tasks of dressing myself in corduroy ‘snickers’ and combing my hair into pigtails ‘with no lumps’ aided by barrettes that boasted my name between hearts. Perhaps I take after Grandma Ruby in both stubbornness and my affinity for fashion.
When we arrived at Grandma’s house that year we were met by a surprise just inside the door. On the floor of the cramped kitchen there were several magical creatures confined in a few large, old-fashioned, speckled drums. The creatures had hard bodies, fans at the end of their tails, and funny jointed legs that scraped against the metal drums as they tried fruitlessly to move. And their long antennae tickled our hands when we reached out to touch them. What joy! I had never seen anything like this!
“Go on down to the basement to play” we were told. Looking back, it was just an innocent ploy to keep us busy for awhile until it was time for supper. Grandma Ruby surely meant no harm.
We left the adults upstairs for the usual nut cracking & hors d’oeuvres and toddled down carefully to the basement, followed by Grandma Ruby with the drums full of creatures. She left us alone in our wonderful world of discovery, with ample room to play with our new friends. I don’t really know how long we were down there, but every moment was bliss. We let the creatures out of their confines and together we explored the expanses of the cement floored underground world. My brother, 2 years older and more knowledgeable in the world of crustaceans, even eased the rubber bands off the claw of one of the amazing creatures, just to demonstrate how they worked. Snap! Clap! Squeal!
At some point we were lured back upstairs with the promise of food and presents. We said good night to our new dear friends, and headed up to join the rest of the family.
Fast forward 20 minutes or so. We all washed up for supper and were seated at the dining room table - all of us made only 8. In front of each place setting were cracking-tools and mini excavation picks. Tiny bowls of melted butter. And plastic bibs with happy, smiling, portraits of our new friends! And then, before we had a chance to say the L-word, the horror began.
Two by two, Grandma Ruby carried a procession of our magical friends up from the basement. Auntie licked her lips and prepared her tools. Dad got his butter closer for dipping. And everyone put on bibs (why were adults wearing bibs?!)! Grandma Ruby didn’t sit down at the head of the table until we each had a ‘friend’ placed in front of us, even tiny me. Where were the rubber binders to keep them from pinching us? Don’t they know that we could get hurt? But there was no movement; No magic, except for the chemistry of the boiling water that had turned our friends completely orange. Crack! The dinner-table mass autopsy began.
At that moment, my brother and I started screaming. Not crying, I am told, but SCREAMING! My mother took us to the back bedroom, where she sat trying to calm us down for the entire duration of supper. By the time she returned to the dining room, she says, all that was left was a pile of scavenged carcasses in the middle of the table. Broken shells. Cracked open, empty tails. They had not even saved her one bite to eat. No lobster for her that year, and I suspect, no midnight Mass, either. One hungry, exhausted, good-deed-doing Catholic vs. 5 full, fleshy Swedes. She didn’t stand a chance.
I don’t remember what happened with pie or presents that night. I am sure we went home exhausted and hungry. The surprises left by Santa Claus the next morning probably consoled us for the day, but the Xmas Eve nightmare lasted. I was scarred. Disappointed. And for the first time I made a decision, asserted my independence, in a way larger than what to wear or how to comb my hair. I began my journey. 7 years later, at age 10, I was completely vegetarian, and I never turned back. Sometime after college I became completely herbivorous. My brother, by the way, was not scarred quite as deeply. He’s an animal-lover, but a “compassionate omnivore.”
The menu for Xmas Eve has never changed, despite that scene in 1982. I have found ways to manage by bringing my own meal or scheduling my arrival after the remains of supper have been cleared away. But I have to honor Grandma Ruby’s tradition. Lobster was not the average choice for a land-locked suburban home in the middle of winter. But Grandma Ruby is not your average woman. I’m happy to report that she is still alive & well at 95, just 6 years into her retirement. And, I have her to thank for my love of lobster & my life as an herbivore.
