Thanksgiving Dinner with the Dutch Mafia

For my family the third week in November has always meant an exodus to Lynden and a return to our ancestral home and the kith and kin that reside there. Alright, maybe ancestral is pushing it a bit, but certainly the place where our roots have been growing in that rich farmland for close to 70 years. My two sisters and I were always dolled up for these trips in frilly dresses that sported scratchy lace along the hem and sleeves…these features would added their own torture to the miserably long two hour drive North. We sat in the back seat of some old Ford sedan trying to not accidently cross the invisible line of demarcation that would mean instantaneous war if your infringement was noted by either backseat companion. Mom and Dad, innocently oblivious of the health hazard they were inflicting upon us, smoked like chimneys in the front seat the whole trip up…with all of the windows rolled up, of course. Mind you, this was also in the days prior to the use of booster seats and I was too short to see out of any of the windows except to see the telephone poles zipping monotonously by on old Hwy 99.

By the time we arrived in Lynden, I was almost comatose with motion sickness! Dad would open the door and I would stumble out, wanting to kiss the ground, but since it was a dairy farm, I resisted the urge. Surprisingly my sisters were never plagued with being car sick and would read books and work puzzles to pass the time…if I just looked at those things, I would toss my cookies! Once we were out of the car and I was able to stand without wobbling, we were given last minute instruction on “proper behavior of young ladies at family gatherings” and entered the front door to my Dad’s oldest sibling and sister.

Aunt Del would rush from the kitchen the moment we opened the door, cheeks flushed, eyes sparkling, and she would scoop us into a bear hug before releasing us into the fray that constituted a large…and I mean large…Dutch family gathering! My Dad had 5 siblings and each of them had 4 or 5 children, so when we got together we easily filled the largest farm house. A curiously long table (I later learned it was actually 8 tables) snaked from the dinning room, through the living room and half way into the parlor. Around it was a mix of wooden and metal chairs and even a piano bench or two. All of the tables were covered in starched white table clothes and lined with an assortment of plates, silverware, and Tupperware cups. Each year someone lovingly crafted place cards to clue us in as to where we were assigned seating. This unveiling was much like an Easter egg hunt as my cousins and I clapped with glee or groaned with dismay as we found our place cards and discovered who we were sitting with this year (would it be with a favorite cousin or an elderly relative who smells like cod liver oil?).

We are kept in the house because it inevitably is raining and cold outside (Thanksgiving in the Northwest!), but our racing from room to room, crawling under the tables, and playing hide and seek behind the heavy brocade curtains is well tolerated since everyone has large and active families. Waves of wonderfully, delicious scents escaped from the kitchen every time one of the ladies comes out of the kitchen bringing a plate of sliced banana nut bread, or home canned baby dill pickles, or cranberry sauce, clueing us in to the fact that dinner is “almost” ready. Steam is literally starting to roll out the kitchen door every time they open it and with it a glimpse of kitchen counters and tables covered in pumpkin pies, scalloped corn, scalloped oysters, a mountain of potatoes, green bean casserole, Jell-O salads…and turkey!

My Uncle announces in an authoritative, though jolly voice, that we should find our seats and there is a mad scramble to do just that. Standing behind our chairs, we all join hands, bow our heads and give thanks for this bounty. The short, to the point grace that I am used to for our dinners at home, is now a much longer, much more inclusive variety and my stomach is growling like a rabid wolf by the time we all join in with a hearty Amen!

We sit and all of my aunts and older female cousins start to parade out in an almost endless line of food being brought from the kitchen. The only thing that I have ever seen that looks anything like this processional is when I saw a program on the National Geographic channel on army ants having a very good day. Then we pass the bowls around our assigned clique, loading our plates up, trying to sample every dish, both the new or the old favorites, and we hear our aunt remind us to “leave room for pie!” The laughing, the talking, and the feasting will continue for at least two hours. Of course we never manage to leave room for pie, but that doesn’t stop anyone from “having just a little slice.”

In Lynden everyone is offered coffee with their pie…even the young children. Of course the children actually get a little splash of coffee in their milk, but it is still offered to them as coffee. One oddity (which I never knew was an oddity until I was an adult) is that everyone, and I mean everyone, gets poured just half of a cup of coffee. I never notice this, particularly since you could go back for endless refills, until I brought my fiancée to one of our gatherings and he asked why they only poured him half of a cup of coffee? I had no idea why, just that it was always done. I asked my non-Dutch mother, who smiled and said that the Dutch hate to waste anything, so they pour a half of a cup of coffee at a time to eliminate the likelihood that it would be left cold in the cup. Following suit, leftovers are painstakingly divided amongst the families and sent home surely to be eaten and certainly not left to waste. Coats are brought out of the bedroom, bear hugs are distributed, and sleepy, children are tucked into the vehicles for a long ride home. Backseat boundary disputes fade and all leave with a better idea of what it means to be a family…and what it means to be a part of the Dutch Mafia.