Total Pageviews

Friday, November 26, 2010

My Dysfuctional Family's Thanksgiving

I know I already wrote once about Thanksgiving, but that was what I thought would happen. Now, I can write about what actully happened.
    First off, my real extended family, and my parents, don't really get along. We're not fans of my mom's side of the family, and my dad's side is just ok, so we've always chosen to spend Thanksgiving with close family friends instead. We invited our friends from Wisconsin, who had moved there from Belgium, to come spend Thanksgiving at our house. Their oldest son, a sophmore swimmer at Rider University flew in on Wednesday night. The next day, his family was due to arrive. The two parents, a senior boy, a freshman boy and a seventh grade girl were driving from Wisoconsin to Cleveland. They thought they would be here at around 2, so none of us ate anything. They didn't get to our house until 5, and we didn't eat until 7, which is highly unusual for my family, who usually likes to eat at 1ish.
     When their family finally got here, the kitchen turned into a loud packed shouting mess. People proceeded to yell in our so dubbed, "Frenchlish", which is a combination of French that the Hensens (our Belgian friends) and us try to speak and the Engish that my family speaks, that no one can make out. Our "Frenchlish" talk was not alone in all its Frenchlish-ness. That was our dinner too. The main dishes and side dishes were all American themed, and obviously we had pie, but the Belgian touches were there. All the alchohol for the parents was European, if it was Proseco, or Belgian Beer or Belgian Wine. Then there was the addition of Belgian Chocolate, which I didn't fight.
     Even though our Thanksgiving was out of the ordinary and dysfuctional, I loved it. Mixing us Belgians and Americans just makes Thanksgiving so much better.

2 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Katie, I'm glad you had such a positive experience this Thanksgiving despite the dysfunction. Although I celebrated Thanksgiving this year with just my family, a few years ago we celebrated with family friends. These family friends brought along their friends, immigrants from Bosnia. Similar to your experience, we attempted to blend three cultures both in conversation and in the food we ate at dinner. Each family contributed a main dish, a side dish and a dessert. Although at times, conversations were a bit shaky due to language barriers, and some food tasted differently than I was used to, it was great to spend the holiday with close friends. The experience emphasized to me what the holiday of Thanksgiving is all about, family, friends and love.

    ReplyDelete