“What the heck?!”
My 4-year-old nephew, Dan, had made his way over from the kids’ table to join the adults for dessert, and this, apparently, was his interpretation of how adults interact. Screaming, “What the heck?!” at random points during conversation. Which is uncannily accurate. If I had just been listening, I might have assumed my mom and cousin were having yet another discussion about caring for a bad back. It’s only a matter of time before he starts yelling, “I’m telling you, you need to try Pilates!”
The rest of the kids’ table had recently adjourned to the Looney Tunes marathon after running out of extra icing to put on their cookies. But for some reason Dan wanted to hang with the big boys, and he seemed to be having a blast playing his version of grown-up.
“Stop laughing. I hate laughing.” And why wouldn’t he be having fun; he was just visiting the adult table. When I was his age I loved visiting the adult table, too. But when you’re a permanent resident it’s much less fun. A lot like Vegas.
I think every family has its own schematic variation on the kids’ table/adult table theme. At my parents’ house we now use the satellite layout; the kids set off to one side in a containable geographic area where they can be seen, heard, and easily ignored. Some families go a step further, setting up the kids in an entirely separate room; a Lord of the Flies approach to the holiday season. If the party ends and no one’s head is on a stick, I guess everyone gets an extra cookie.
When I was growing up our holiday geometry was T-shaped; my grandmother’s heavy oak dining room table serving as the top of the T with a slowly deteriorating array of folding tables and chairs splaying out to form the base. The height differential between the random tables was masked with an equally deteriorating array of tablecloths. By the time you got down to the kids’ table at the base of the T you were pretty much sitting on an egg crate pulled up to an old sewing bench covered in something that could possibly be the Shroud of Turin.
Regardless of the specific geometry, I think there is always a certain pull during the holidays, after dessert has been served and the decaf coffee is flowing like water, for some kids to play adult, to pull up a chair, sip some milk with two hands and learn what it means to be all growned up.
“What the heck?” “Stop laughing.” For Dan, I guess this means being a curmudgeon. We are really letting his generation down. And, if we’re being honest, I blame my parents. They are the grandparents now and they set the tone. They started the conversation about sciatica.
During my kids’ table years things were much different. Sure, my grandmother had bunions the sight of which could make a grown man throw up in his mouth. But I never had to hear about them. Instead, when I took my place at the top of the T, I would always find my grandparents and their brothers and sisters— the historical, emotional, and genetic center of our family — playing poker. Adulthood used to be so much more fun.
Even on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s most sacred and solemn holiday, this crew didn’t think twice about breaking into a good game of seven card stud, low ball. Gambling in the face of God. That’s the kind of flagrant disregard for religious etiquette that can only come from knowing you’ve already paid your penance in life. Which they definitely had, and not because of the bunions. (Though, seriously, those were something). It was because they came from the Old Country.
My grandmother’s family moved to the U.S. from Poland in the early half of the 20th century. Though “moved” is too quaint a word for what they did. It’s not like their friends back in the shtetl helped them load up the U-Haul in exchange for some beer and a couple live chickens. Theirs was an 18-year journey beginning with my great-grandfather and some fuzzy stories about debtor’s prison. He came to — or quite possibly escaped to — the U.S. with his oldest daughter. Then, one steamship ticket by one steamship ticket, he sent for his wife and each of his other four children, oldest to youngest, ending with my grandmother who by the end had been left alone to care for her ailing mother.
When my grandfather was a kid his parents snuck him out of Czarist Russia alone, in a hay wagon.
My parents grew up with snow. Though, the way they go on about it, Dan will probably thinks that’s as bad as the Pogroms.
So I was 14 before I realized not everyone over 60 spoke with a Polish accent. And I still forget that some grandmothers teach their grandkids a good cross stitch instead of how to bluff on a low pair. My sister and I called this generation the Alta Kockers, or “AKs” for short. It’s a Yiddish term that means “old fart.” But in keeping with the beauty of Yiddish, it has simultaneously derisive and endearing overtones; unlike schmuck.
The AKs were all over 70 years old, under five and a half feet tall and in varying degrees of hunched. My grandmother herself couldn’t have been more than four eleven and was like a giant, Polish grandmother stuffed animal you might win at a carnival. “Ooh, ooh, Daddy, pop one more balloon and win me the Bubbe doll! When you squeeze her she giggles and says, ‘Oy, my little shayna punim.’” Granted, this would be a very strange carnival.
The whole lot of them worked in my grandparents’ garage making drapes. I don’t even think there are zoning laws covering the kind of operation they had going on back there; five to 10 retired immigrants working in an unventilated garage on heavy machinery dating back to the Hoover administration. But to me, it was normal. I figured everyone’s grandparents ran a sweatshop in their back yard. My sister and I spent many a Saturday afternoon picking up stray pins and needles for five cents apiece —violating about 37 different OSHA regulations in the process.
Playing poker with the AKs, I’d hear great stories about the Old Country. To hear them tell it, it was a magical, prewar land where Jews lived separately but in peace with their oppressive yet lovable gentile neighbors. Graphic stories of oppression involving angry, rock-throwing mobs somehow took on a detached, Old World charm when told between spells of bickering over who shorted on the ante. I pictured my great aunts and uncles as kids (their 70-year-old heads on 12-year-old bodies) being chased around by an old bald guy shaking a stick; everyone running around like a Benny Hill episode. “You crazy Jews…”
Sadly but inevitably, over the years our family and our holidays have grown smaller and smaller. I have two aunts and until after college had no uncles or first cousins. My family was very top-heavy. And throughout the ’80s the top started to give way. To make matters worse, I only had one set of grandparents because my parents are also step brother and sister.
Let’s just digest that for a minute and then I can explain. But I’ll warn you up front, the explanation doesn’t end with, “…and so they aren’t really step brother and sister.” Because they are.
Here’s the deal. My mom’s dad passed away before I was born; my dad’s mom, when I was around one year old. Then after my parents got married (and I cannot emphasize that word enough) one thing that I will never allow myself to picture led to another thing we will never speak of again, and my mom’s mom and dad’s dad married each other. So while, sadly, neither of my grandparents lived long enough to dance at my wedding, at least I danced at theirs.
For obvious reasons I’ve never asked my parents exactly how they celebrated the night they became siblings. But once you get past all the Appalachian undertones you’ll see the benefits of growing up with this situation True, I missed out on knowing two grandparents, missed connecting with a huge part of my history, of who I am. But I also never had to call anyone “Meemaw.” And for the holidays there were no negotiations or alternating years or running from one awkward, hostile dinner to the next. We just went to Grandma and Grandpa’s house and ate at the giant T.
My grandmother was the last of the Alta Kockers, outliving her second husband, siblings, sweatshop co-workers, and poker buddies by more than a decade. And with her passing, along with grief, came the stark realization that we’re now all one seat closer to the top of the T. Which is probably why we don’t use the T formation anymore. But you can arrange the tables any way you want, there’s no getting around it; everyone has moved up a generational notch. My parents are the Alta Kockers now. And if Dan’s perspective is any indication, the same kind of fondness I have for poker, my kids will have for sore necks, perhaps getting a little teary-eyed whenever they pass a Relax the Back Store.
I can’t even imagine what we’ll be talking about when my grandchildren come to visit the adult table. There will be no exotic Old Country. I didn’t even grow up with snow. Perhaps our disembodied heads kept alive in jars will regale the children with stories of the time when people lived above ground and robots weren’t evil. Who knows. But while living at the adult table may suck, it’s made much more bearable knowing that at least the kids still like to come and visit once in a while.
