Family Cook-Out Love
Labor Day: chrysanthemums and corn stalks. Oh, do get me started. In September, we find cattails and Joe Pye weed and gather pine cones on Morris Island. Traditions enhance security for some and I know that even when I’m beat, I’m always glad when I muster the effort to re-enact a ritual.
Having said that (you know when someone uses those three words, the rest of the sentence is going to be a downer) I’d like to get my hands on the person who started the Labor-Day-Barbecue-at-my-House-tradition.
Every year, Bob’s family comes down from New Hampshire. The thing is - I love them, but the overriding theme of our gatherings is my Jewish-ness versus their pagan beliefs - oh excuse me, I meant to say Gentile-ness. Don’t get me wrong. They love me too, but they worry about offending me, so they go overboard. At Christmas, they have a Fiddler on the Roof tape playing.
The truth is, I’m uptight around them also, basically because they’re in-laws - you know - part of the authority pack you spend your life kissing up to, all the while pretending you’ve outgrown this trait. But this past weekend, I decided to dip my tootsies in the maturity pool and I learned the following: there really does come a time in life when you stop caring about what other people think and you no longer need somebody else’s approval.
If I ever get there, I’ll send you an invite.
Now, I don’t keep kosher but Bob’s mom needs to act as if I do. Hence, she doesn’t put cheese on my hamburger, which is a major drag. She knows it’s not kosher to mix milk products with meat products because, as I once told her, Jewish people are all lactose intolerant.
I thought this year, I’d grill brisket, for his mom’s sake. A kosher cook-out. Bob was on the fence.
“I want the truth, Bob. You always loved my brisket.”
“Well, it’s kind of stringy.”
“Your sense of taste is in the toilet,” I said.
“You asked for the truth.”
“You should know me by now. If I ask for the truth, it
always means I don’t want to hear
it.”
He tried to get away. A smart, but unsuccessful move.
“Shellfish isn’t kosher, either.” Now I was on my Jewish deprivation kick. “My mother says lobsters eat sewage. And Christmas? Forget about presents.”
“But Jews don’t celebrate Christmas.”
“That’s right. We’re all stuck in our houses obsessing about mayonnaise. A milk product or not? If I was kidnapped and my picture was on a milk carton, nobody in my neighborhood eating any meat would have seen it!” I couldn’t stop. “Butterless bread with meat, Bob! All Jewish people know the Heimlich maneuver. Heimlich was probably a Jew who had to save his mother from choking on a dry wad of rye.”
Bob decided we’d have hot-dogs - Oscar Mayer.
His mom brought potato
knishes. “Did you know
we have a Jewish dentist?” she
said.
I gave Bob a look. He took me aside. “My parents mean well. This is your problem - not theirs’.”
“That’s not possible!”
He walked away, not changing his mind. And I, after a hard look, reluctantly discovered two things. First - we need to search beneath a loved one’s words to find the truth, and secondly - if God wanted us to keep kosher, he wouldn’t have put swiss cheese on a sandwich with corned beef and named it after some Jewish guy called Reuben.
