Fuzz's brother phoned at 8:30 last night to invite us for Easter dinner today. Yeah, the invite is a little late, but then we aren't the closest bunch in the world. Fuzz is kind of the black sheep of his family, so I guess that makes me Mrs. Black Sheep. Neither side of the family is bad or good, we're just different. We suspect they think us wierd. By choice, we don't have children. We don't like hockey (just about a criminal act in this country), nor deer hunting, and we have way too much education which never seems to make us much money, which I suspect is the only valid reason they can see for so many years in school. And we eat wierd food with tofu and spices and all that stuff. These folks barely eat vegetables, period. I swear Fuzz's mom was going to fall off her chair when Bro announced last fall he had developed a taste for brussels sprouts. With garlic, yet!
But we still like each other. They're generally nice folks. Well, except they're kind of zenophobic. (Yes, I'm looking for a polite euphemism for "racist".) And something like that always comes up, showing up at the dinner table smelling like a warthog from the underbrush. I wish I had an air horn to shoot off during the silences in our conversations.
Fuzz asks bro: can we bring anything? "Nope, we've got everything" says Bro. They don't even drink, so the usual gift of wine is out. My last dessert was a washout with them. It was an apple crumble topped pie with a whole wheat crust and half the sugar was replaced by splenda. Ok, so it wasn't my most successful effort. It was...um... sturdy. But, hey, it was pie! And we're all trying to watch our weight.
So what do I do at 9 pm last night? I set out in search of the ingredients for a lemon bundt cake. No whole wheat flour this time, only the fluffiest whitest of white. Oh boy, there's a metaphor for you... I know it's just anxiety that is driving me to make this cake. I need to bring something. I know, I know, I don't really NEED to bring anything. Allow me my security bundt. Something that screams "Like me!!!" or at least sighs, "Well, if you don't like me, at least I can have my cake, and I'll eat it too." But just one piece.
Nice to know what my motivations are going into this. Sigh.
1 comment:
I totally agree with your comment about the families we create being just as important as the families we are born into. My family is not that close, but here in New York I feel that I have made a family out of friends. The nice thing about this kind of a family is that you get to pick them.
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