Nellie Boo: 2007

Family, a word that can mean so many things to many different people. Some families consist of extremely close friends, some consists of a traditional trend (mom, dad, brothers, sisters, grandparents and cousins) and then there are those families where there are a combination of friends and the blood relatives. Within the families there are many different speech communities, but for some reason there is still an intertwined connection that keeps the conversations extremely interesting. Around the holidays, there is nothing better than surrounding yourself with the people that you love, especially Thanksgiving. Not to mention the amount of food, WOW, there is just nothing like it. For the past 19 years, my house would be filled with so many people that I have grown to love with all my heart. This Thanksgiving was extremely different.

First of all, so many things have changed between last year and this year. My aunt got married and had a baby. My cousin is doing his own thing with his “music career” and along with that he has himself a new girlfriend. My grandfather (dad’s side) is sick with lung cancer, and therefore he could not make it out to New Jersey to share Thanksgiving. All of my aunts had Thanksgiving at their own homes, and because they were home, so were my other cousins. So all in all, my Thanksgiving was relatively quiet. It was my mother, step-father, my brother and both of my grandparents (mom’s side). The food did not match the amount of people we had, my mother and grand mother still cooked as if we were having 25+ people over the house, so YES, plenty of leftovers *lol*. Even though the quantity of people were not there, the miscommunication was so prominent, you would have thought we had a bunch of people in the house.

My mother and grandmother have an odd way communicating, first and foremost. Their intergenerational communication is valued but it can sometimes get out of control. My grandmother is from Jamaica, and my mother was born in America, but my grandmother has a tendency to not want to conform to the way things are done in for the present time. My grandmother can be quite stubborn, so when my mother tries to express a concern to her, it always turns out to be some sort of argument. For instance, now that my aunt has a new baby, my grandmother comes down from Brooklyn, New York to help my aunt out with the baby. When my grandmother comes down to see my aunt, my mother has an issue because my grandmother will spend most of her time at my aunt’s house, and she will leave Jersey to go back to New York without at least stopping by to see my mother. My mother can not stand the fact that her mother wants to stay in Brooklyn. They got into an argument about it while cooking string beans and desserts. “Daughters attributed their mothers’ faults to events beyond their mothers’ control,” (190) according to Karen Fingerman in Aging mothers and their Adult Daughters: A study in Mixed Emotions- scholar.google.com. Although this was just a book preview it contained vital information about the emotions that aging mothers and aging daughters go through. Much of the confusion comes in when the aging daughter starts to take on the role of the mother of the aging mother. What my mother does not understand is that my grandmother has been very independent on herself, making the move from Jamaica and raising her kids, there is not too much that someone can tell her. There is always a conflict when my mother tries to get her to move out here with us. My grandmother lives in our old apartment in Brooklyn, it is quite huge and very comfortable, but my mother fears that something will happen and she will be out of reach to get to where she is.

The way that my mother communicates with my grandmother is weird. It’s almost as if she talks to her like my grandmother is not competent enough to make her own decisions. My grandmother expresses uncertainty when discussing things with my mother, because my mother can be quick to shut things down. When my grandmother is in New York, her own decisions are made and uncertainty is reduced, by far. When my grandmother comes out to Jersey, she is solely dependant on her children for transportation. In other words, if my aunt does not want to drive to take my grandmother somewhere, then my grandmother can not leave the house. She can not stand being dependant on others. As my grandmother would try to explain her situation, my mother would almost cut her completely off to get her two cents in. Out of nowhere there was a spark of change. My grandmother walked over to the oven and took something out and added an extra ingredient. My mother said “Oh I did not even realize I was missing that.” My grandmother changed the path of conversation. I can just imagine that my grandmother, not wanting to argue, found a topic in which they could both connect on.

My step-father had to work on Thanksgiving Day. He works in the city and did not reach home until 6:30pm, so we ended up waiting until he got home so we can sit down and eat. My mother and he have an interesting relationship. Their marriage is completely “totalized.” They spend a lot of time apart during the week, especially because he works in the city. So, my mother would have to go to work for 6am, while my stepfather gets my brother together for school, so that he can make it into work for 1pm. My mother, at the end of the day, picks up y brother and gets home by about 6pm. The only time they really get to spend together is after 2am, when my step-father gets home, and the weekends (but my mother takes work on some weekends). In regards to their communication skills, it is pretty funny sometimes. My step-father and my mother are both stubborn, so when one corrects the other, it’s like an insult. They argue, which is typical but of course in the end they always make up. On Thanksgiving Day, however, I think my mother was just happy to see him home and well (also so that we can eat *lol*). He was watching something on television and my mother was trying to get everything that was not set, set. It was so obvious that my mother was getting impatient with him. So she went into the family room and shut the t.v. off in front of his face and said “Let’s eat.” My step-father really had nothing to say because he realized that he was holding up the family, after the fact. After we all ate, my step-father and my grandfather went in the basement to watch the football game and play pool. Male bonding is amazing, because no matter the age group as long as there is something in common, they are all right.

These three relationships stood out to most to me during my Thanksgiving holiday. I love my family, and I know that they will be there for me when I need them, or even when I don’t. Bytheway, the food was fantastic, and if I can communicate with it, O MY, it would have nothing to say, because it would be gone.