Home for the Holidays

Or, rather, what to do when you’re not!

For those who know me well, it’s not a secret that the hardest American holiday for me to miss while living overseas is Thanksgiving.  In fact, it’s harder than all the other ones combined.  And as testament to its still non-commercial value, it hasn’t yet hopped over The Pond.

Which is to say there could be a bit of a reprieve if I could pick a restaurant nearby and have some facsimile of the Thanksgiving feast.  However, while I have seen hundreds of free-range chickens while out-n-about here in the Netherlands, I have never seen one turkey.  I don’t think the Dutch grow them.  Besides, if our microwave-sized oven is typical of most, no turkey would fit in it whole.

Dear Astrid has offered each year for us to drive to Amsterdam an hour away to eat the traditional meal at Hard Rock Café.  Bless her.  But it’s not the same, with the rest of the country working and my own family absent.

So, after resigning myself now for the third year in a row, I resort to the “second blessing”…the memories of years past with good family, good food, good fun and good…FOOTBALL.

Though I paid my dues and did my fair share, I was not one who ever gravitated to the kitchen over the holidays.  In later years my mantra was “I’ll do the dishes if you cook!”  You’d quicker see me in front of the TV with the men-folk, watching, if I was lucky, the grand finales of the college football season.

Now, skip back to when we were in Atlanta this past September.  That’s when grandson Nicholas (my dancing partner) roped Astrid into getting the house rigged up for football action at the beginning of the season. 

But here’s the thing….

We make up one heck of a football family!  When 3 of the 4 colleges/universities represented are BIG ones, you’re really talking football business.  There’s moi, a MICHIGAN grad (U of M, Go Blue).  Amy, my firstborn, is a grad of Flagler College in St. Augustine, FL, not what you’d call a football school (said with a straight face).  But she married a man who more than makes up for that as a SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (USC) grad.  And son Mark graduated from GEORGIA.  Three biggies and all from different conferences, so we can all be happy when each other wins.

Did I mention OREGON?  Nope.  That’s because it’s still a figment of Nicholas’ imagination right now.  It’s HIS favorite football school because…he likes the colors (or so he told Astrid).

Now that you know the important details, you understand why it was hard to be away from the family right now.  Did I mention good family, good food, good fun and good…FOOTBALL?

I always flip a switch, of course.  The money I would spend on a feast I give to charity.  And when I stopped to really think about it, I said to Astrid, “In spite of missing home for the holidays, look at how much I have here with you!”  For one, we drove an hour away to Antwerp, Belgium, on Black Friday and spent an overnight there to see the city.  How many in my family would have given anything to do that!

And besides, while last year Michigan finally beat Ohio State after a 7-year losing streak, sadly they lost 2 days ago in what must have been a nail-biter, 26-21.

Astrid says, “Sometimes you lose and sometimes you gain.” 

And always you have the memories…the second blessings.  I truly am thankful!

School Spirit

Following very closely on the heels of those dang inedible Buckeyes horse chestnuts from my last post, some of you will "get" this.  The rest of you...well...go ahead and roll your eyes.

This is that time of the year when it happens.  Shuffling through the fallen leaves.  The smell of their burning raked-up piles.  Dancing with the cold, crisp air.  I'm immediately transported back to those home-game Saturdays, walking across campus with the rest of the school body to the Big House. 

We were electric with excitement.  Our previous night's game-rally was still coursing through our blood.  We were already tasting victory.  Hail to the Victors Valiant!  Hail to the Conquering Heroes!

Some Saturdays were more important than others, like when sister Ruth's school dared to enter our stadium.  Even in my own family, them are fightin' words (good English).  When Ruth's school beat mine a couple Saturdays ago (while Astrid and I were in Atlanta), I was reduced to GD swearing.  Seriously. 

Sweet little innocent Wolverine Ginnie.  Look at her up there on our headboard.  Of all the things I could have gotten rid of before moving!  The wee one on the right represents me as a college girl in the 60s.  The one with gray hairs is, um, still fighting strong!

Astrid says I become a different person during those games.  She looks at me sideways, wondering if she really knows me?

But she hasn't seen nothin' yet (good English)!  Wait till the BIG one comes two Saturdays from now.   Our REAL arch rivalry.  Even after almost 50 years, I can still work up a sweat about the outcome of that final game of our season.

That final game, btw, was ranked by ESPN in 2000 as the greatest North American sports rivalry.  

Who cares, you say.  I DO!  And so does one of you.  I know who you are.  Are you squirming yet?  Sweating?  Our Big House will be packed to the gills, waiting for you...all 110,000 of us.  Who cares that you've won our last 6 match-ups.  This is the year.  No mercy.

Let the stats speak for themselves:

Michigan–Ohio State rivalry
First meeting	October 17, 1897[1] Michigan 34, Ohio State 0
Last meeting	November 27, 2010[2] Ohio State 37, Michigan 7 (Win vacated by Ohio State)[3]
Next meeting	November 26, 2011
Total meetings	107
Series record	Michigan: 57–44–6 Ohio State: 43*–57–6 *2010 vacated win not included
Largest victory	Michigan, 86–0 (1902)
Longest streak	Michigan, 9 (1901–1909)
Current streak	Michigan: 7 losses (2004–2010) Ohio State: 6 wins, (2004–2009)
Trophy:	None

I'll be gracious in victory, of course.

And if we lose...yet again...we'll do what we always do with those dang inedible Buckeyes horse chestnuts:  we'll chew them up and spit them out!

 GO BLUE!

[Sadly, the recently reported sport's sex scandal at another of America's great universities was disclosed after I had drafted my post. It could have happened anywhere, of course. Please know I grieve with all the victims who are part of this very sad story.]

Trick or Treat

Okay, okay.  I’m a week early!

But Astrid and I are in Atlanta as we speak, having just spent a glorious weekend in the north Georgia mountains with my kids and grandson.  Halloween is everywhere.  However, for this post, my thoughts are back home where we live in the Netherlands….

Where THOUSANDS of these chestnuts have fallen to the ground from the HUNDREDS of trees that surround our citadel city.  Seriously.

Actually, they had all but fallen by the beginning of this month.  OCTOBER.  AUTUMN.  FOOTBALL.  They sprinkled the ground like lost-n-found money.  Like gems from the sky.  I became the little girls and boys everywhere who came with their mommies…and bags…to collect their treasures.  “Look, Mommy!  Look at this one!”

One day I took out my own bag and collected my own.  Enough to sink my imaginary ship.

TRICK:  Not a one of them was edible.

All my life I had heard about chestnuts roasting on open fires at this time of the year.  Though I had never seen or experienced it, I envisioned crackling fireplaces in cozy, romantic homes.  No one ever told me about the 55-gallon oil drums around Europe's open-air markets, spitting their fires underneath iron plates sizzling with sweet chestnuts.  The kind you eat. 

Who would have known there were two kinds!  I first found ones like these in Germany years back and raced home to roast them in the oven.  I had eaten my first roasted chestnuts in Munich a few years before and could hardly wait to taste them again.  I thought I had found money on the ground.

TRICK:  Those weren’t edible either! 

And that’s when I found out they either are or they aren’t, depending.  The ones that are are sweet chestnuts.  The ones that aren’t are horse chestnuts or buckeyes!  Another trick and what a waste, since the Buckeyes are my archrival. 

  

Nevertheless, I found myself a perfectly-shaped specimen from the above stash (where I live surrounded by chestnut trees--the ones that are non-edible tricks), and turned it around tenderly in my hand on my daily walks…until it felt like a TREAT.

And because the Dutch don’t seem too keen on the edible variety (why is that???), I now wait eagerly for our trip to Düsseldorf, Germany, in early December, to visit the Christmas market…and to find my chestnut vendor on the corner who will serve me up a paper cone full of the sweet delicacies.

Such is life's sermonette.  Sometimes you have to pick through the tricks till you lay your hands on the TREAT!