A few months ago, my son, Oliver and his wife and child were at my house, and I served dinner. Now, we’re talking the first few days of September, and the menu was turkey, gravy, stuffing, and yams with marshmallows. This is how our conversation went:
Oliver: You’re very eccentric.
Me: I am?
Oliver: Yes. Very. It’s the hottest day of the year and you’re having Thanksgiving dinner. Again. All year round.
And:
It’s like you had a head injury on Thanksgiving in 1976 and now you have to recreate it every month.
And:
It’s like a lost Albert & David Maysles documentary about a woman obsessed with Thanksgiving.
Me: My mom was eccentric. I’m not sure I am.
Oliver: Your mom went down to the desert and hid her eccentricity. You flaunt yours shamelessly.
I let him continue his rant because I get so much joy out of being made fun of…
Oliver: You’re like Arthur in that movie where any outlandish childish impulse is at your command – like a whole Thanksgiving dinner in August.
And:
If there were a top ten list of extremely eccentric things, Thanksgiving in the summer would be #3.
And:
There are normal things to cook like a summer salad, salmon and cucumbers. A full Thanksgiving dinner feast for Labor Day is wacky.
And:
In the middle of a recession, too. People are starving and getting abducted by ICE, and you are eating stuffing by the pool.
Oliver never really put a period on it, as my dad would say, through this whole meal. But I could see it sinking into my husband’s brain. He was considering it as he stepped outside to get better reception to talk to his daughter. Clearly it was on his mind. He came walking in and said that Emma didn’t think it was that eccentric.
When I asked him what he thought, he also said he didn’t think it was ———– that eccentric.
Me: See, Oliver, Michael doesn’t think it’s that eccentric.
Oliver: Well, he has Stockholm Syndrome.
When I’m with my kids, I am the object of their sarcasm, and we all end up laughing – sometimes until we cry. Though there are times when Oliver goes too far and I end up crying for real.
It’s been rolling around in my head for weeks and I am struggling to figure out if I’m an eccentric person. It’s hard to judge yourself. I know that I’m not normal in the way my brother is. He rebelled against his circus-like family and became the Alex Keaton character from “Family Ties.” The extra-straitlaced one in the group. Alan ran away from the circus, and I stayed.
I know that I say whatever I want at all times, with no filter. I also know it can shock someone if they don’t know me. My husband is the opposite. He never says what’s on his mind so you’re always wondering, what does this guy think? I appreciate that he’s sort of reserved and it leaves room for me to be – well – me.
But am I eccentric?
A few years ago, a newer friend of mine said that I seemed like I was “on the spectrum.” She said this on Facebook during a conversation I was having with hundreds of people weighing in about me. I was saying how people think when they meet me that I’m going to be as warm, friendly and cuddly as my daughter Augie––then they are thrown because I can be a little standoffish. I’ll let people in when, and if, I’m ready. I don’t hug easily. This woman, who I see often, said the thing about autism. I never thought it was an accurate assessment. But eccentric? Hmmmm, maybe. It does run in my family.
My mother famously wore flea collars on her ankles in the extra hot summers when fleas were rampant. Recently, I came home from a few weeks’ vacation to a small infestation on my animals, and I could see how far you might go to keep nasty fleas away. My mother never left the house and basically was agoraphobic. I can relate. I have to push myself to leave mine because I don’t want to be like her.
Both my parents took in strays. In my mother’s case, both animal and human strays. She took in a famous drug-addicted makeup artist. He had a dog named Bones, given to him by his client Marilyn Monroe. Each day as I left for high school, he begged me to bring him home his favorite drug, speed. Little did he know I had a stash of Dexedrine hidden inside the body of a rubber doll upstairs in my room.
Why, you ask, did I have a doll filled with Dexedrine? Well, a drug dealer friend would give me handfuls of those little white pills when I’d run into him in the alley. He was hoping I would give them to my druggie friend that he was in love with. Even then, I knew not to enable drug addicts. That rubber doll and the speed ended up in a landfill.
My father took in a homeless schizophrenic black man right off the street to be his caretaker. My father could have easily been killed by John, who called himself the Beverly Hills poet. He sold his poems for a dollar in front of the deli, Nate n’ Al’s. He would sit on the ground, voices in his head, eating only parsley by the handful. He was extra-strong and it’s a miracle my dad didn’t end up as a Dateline story.
No wonder I am —– different? With this kind of exposure, how could I not be? I’m not a risk taker like my dad. Well, except for sneaking into an empty Beverly Hills flats home to steal a Muenster cheese sandwich and some Van De Kamp chocolate chip cookies. And snorting that one line of heroin in my 20s because a quack dentist took my wisdom teeth out, botched the job, and I was suffering from a painful infection. To this day, my kids made endless fun of me for that one little line of heroin.
When my husband and I are on our daily walks with our dog, I’ll blurt things out to random people. I’m obsessed with sidewalk etiquette. If three or four people across won’t move out of the way and expect us to walk in the street, I will yell, “Single file!” Or if a group of people does move out of the way, I’ll say, “Good job!”
When we are out of earshot, my husband will say, “This all goes in the eulogy.” He doesn’t understand the blurting out. That’s not his style.
Whereas I’m totally blunt. I never want to be thinking late at night, “I should have said that.”
Gotta go. I’m preparing my cranberry sauce for tonight’s Thanksgiving dinner.
Recipe: I liked the yams with brown sugar, butter and marshmallows for years. Lately I have switched to a yam recipe that calls for 4 cooked yams and with an electric mixer add 1/3 cup orange juice, 1 tablespoon orange rind grated, 1 teaspoon ground ginger, 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter, 1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar.
For topping heat in a pan 2/3 cup light brown sugar, 1 stick unsalted butter, 1 cup chopped pecans, 1 teaspoon cinnamon.
Pour this mixture over the yams into a baking dish for 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees.
