A Minnesota Goodbye
As we prepare to say goodbye to our family home of 50-plus years, it’s been a long process. I suppose you could call it a true “Minnesota” goodbye.
We knew this day was coming. The past few years, my mom would lament, “You know this will probably be our last Thanksgiving here” or “This is going to be our last Christmas tree, our last Christmas all together in the house.” Even though we knew it was inevitable, leaving this house that had been the backdrop for every holiday, birthday and important life milestone for the past five decades seemed unimaginable.
It’s now been three months since we started the process of emptying the house. It has been an emotional process with so many memories resurfacing around every turn. Not surprisingly, many of these memories center around the dining room table and are connected to cherished family recipes!
One of my earliest memories is the day my parents came home from the hospital with my baby brother. It was late July in 1975, and my grandma Hilma had been staying with me, my older brother and my dad. I adored my grandma, but I recall being very annoyed when she dared to use some mysterious red dust (which I later learned was paprika) on the chicken salad she was serving us for lunch. I had had enough and wanted my mom to come home to take care of us!
When my parents pulled into the driveway that day, I couldn’t leave that table fast enough to greet them and to meet the baby, even though no one would tell me if it was a boy or a girl. Maybe they wanted to see my reaction in real-time? It’s a good thing there weren’t any video recordings of that day as I remember being a big old stinker about both the paprika and that I didn’t get the baby sister I was hoping for. (By the way, I have since grown to accept and appreciate both paprika and my younger brother.)
I’ll always remember the countless birthday celebrations around our dining room table often with the one and only chocolate cake and a hefty side of Bridgeman’s ice cream. There were the “friend parties” where my mom would make some type of decorated cake or buy a cake from Ed’s Bakery, which seemed like a really big deal.
One memorable birthday for me happened in the 80s, when I was in 4th grade, I was allowed to have a slumber party. There were about six girls and we spread sleeping bags across the living room floor where we watched movies and munched on chips and candy and giggled all night long. Mind you, my parents didn’t have cable and VCRs were not yet available so we had to rent a Laser Disc machine from the library that came in a huge, suitcase-like carrier which we eagerly lugged home to watch classics like Jaws and The Birds or whatever the library had available. It didn’t matter, it was just so thrilling to watch movies at home! I think it was a pretty tame night, but to my knowledge, this was the first and last slumber party the house would ever host.
In later years, my two brothers and I each had our “open house” graduation parties at the house—the events were carbon copies of each other that included an elegant table perfectly arranged with with my mom’s finest dishes and silver trays and set up buffet style. The menu was simple and not over the top like today’s grad parties. There was chicken salad or finger sandwiches, a store-bought sheet cake decorated in our school colors and a punch bowl–the hallmark of any special celebration. But the talk of the party was always my mom’s spread of special bars and cookies. She did not hold back and I am convinced some people came to these parties just for her treats!
These parties were rare occasions where the eating and drinking extended throughout the entire house. The typical rules about eating at the table or keeping food in the kitchen all went out the window when there was a party going on. Another rule that was broken at my grad party was when I may or may not have had permission to indulge in some cheap champagne. This turned out to be a big mistake as I got very sick that evening…right in the kitchen sink. Lesson learned: if you are going to drink champagne, at least drink the good stuff!
Holidays were the time when this old house would really shine. There were decorations in every nook and cranny, and my parents always took such pride in having a huge tree that filled the front bay window adorned with popcorn and cranberries that they had strung by hand. My brothers and I would help with this days-long process—sitting in folding chairs in front of the TV with a sheet under us as more of the popcorn ended up on the floor than on the strings!
During the weeks leading up to Christmas, the small galley kitchen served as command central for my mom’s holiday baking. So many cookies, bars and holiday breads were cranked through that tiny kitchen that I don’t know how our oven kept up, let alone my mother. The dining room table provided an additional workspace for cooling baked goods, decorating sugar cookies and packaging all the items for storage or my mom’s treat trays that would be delivered to neighbors, the beauty shop, teachers and more.
Christmas Eve celebrations included our grandparents and later grew to include my husband, my brothers’ spouses, six grandchildren and my two dogs. These were the best of times with all of us together in the cozy space, falling on top of each other with barely room to move! Yet, we still were able to squeeze everyone at the dining room table. Well, almost…we had to use a card table extension for additional seating that stretched the table all the way to the living room.
The Christmas table was set with my grandmother’s china dishes and the nice silverware with a menu that typically included meatballs, ham and cheesy potatoes. The highlight of the evening was always my mom’s special Christmas Jell-O! Festive ribbons of cherry and lime Jell-O, beautifully molded on a stunning green-trimmed Fenton Emerald platter—a dish used but once a year for this very purpose.
Last, but not least, there were the Sunday dinners. I will forever associate this house with waking up to the smell of meat roasting each Sunday morning and eating dinner together at 12:00 p.m. (sharp!). We’d all be summoned to the dining room table to start with a salad made of iceberg lettuce, green onion, tomatoes and French dressing. Maybe some croutons if we were lucky. Next, my mom would bring out the recurring components of Sunday dinner, one by one, that we all loved: dinner rolls, scalloped corn, fluffy mashed potatoes and an overflowing platter of beef and pork roast. The dinner could finally commence when my mom would walk out of the kitchen with her glorious gravy to pass around the table.
This weekly tradition continued well after my brothers and I grew up and moved away. It became one of the highlights of returning home on a weekend, knowing there would likely be a “Sunday dinner” with all of our familiar favorites. Sitting around that table in the dining room felt like being enveloped in a big hug of nostalgia with all the memories and laughter from the past that took place in this very room.
While we no longer can gather around the table in our family home, it’s comforting to know my parents are settling into their senior living apartment, which includes much of the same furniture, the same pictures on their new walls …the same dining room table from their house. Their apartment is starting to feel like home for them, and with every visit, we are creating new memories.
There is a saying that “a house is made of brick and mortar, but a home is made by the people who live there.” True, but it doesn’t make it any easier to say goodbye.
