A Few Words Before Christmas Dinner
A Toast to my Great Aunt Etta Mahoney
Happy Holidays my Friends!
As the Christmas chaos, the making of lists and the buying of gifts, comes to a close, and we hone in on what is truly important about this time of year, I invite you to think about the magnificent men and women who manage to hold families together throughout the years with their offerings of meat, potatoes, and everyone’s favorite libations.
Join me in honoring those gracious hosts who spend a small fortune and countless hours planning and prepping in the weeks, days, and hours leading up to the meals that mark our years through our memories and photographs. Cherish your spot at that table they prepared for you, bow your heads and pray, and then raise your glass in gratitude for the ones who made it all possible, past and present.
Here is my toast to my Great Aunt Etta Mahoney who I never got the chance to thank, but whose influence on me can be seen in everything I do.
Enjoy!
Meat & Potatoes
It had not occurred to me that the last time I had been to my great aunt Etta Mahoney’s house, I’d been half this size, or that I’d never seen the house empty of life or love, for that matter. The old house appeared to have shriveled up. Even the walls, ceilings and floors all seemed to be holding onto something that was no longer present. They buckled into one another like tattered homeless men huddling together to stay warm, long after their fire had died out. I felt betrayed. This was not at all like I remembered.
The air was thick and still. As I lowered my head and pulled my shirt collar over my nose to filter the musty air, something made me smile. Seeing the bright red carpet was like running into someone you know, on a crowded street in a foreign land. This shred of familiarity triggered memories instantaneously. I could hear Etta screaming in horror as my brother and sisters and I ran to greet her, without first wiping the pulp off the bottoms of our shoes, from the Mulberry tree just outside her door. You never heard such vulgarity as she’d kneel to the floor with a scrub brush and pail, wearing a housecoat and an apron!
As my aunt Nancy, the heir to the estate opened a door, climbed over a snow blower, and led me upstairs, I had renewed hope. Surely years of sleepless nights, dreaming of restoring the old house and starting a bed-and-breakfast, were not wasted. At the top of the stairs, I desperately searched for all those features that Ohio city homes were famous for but found nothing.
The amazing truth is that there is no gorgeous woodwork, no leaded glass windows, and no cathedral ceilings. There is no charm and nothing is unique. I stood in awe at the realization that what made this house so wonderful, and what made everyone who ever visited never want to leave, was my Great Aunt Etta herself, her Irish wit, her brutal honesty, her loud sometimes vulgar screams, her warmth and most of all her generosity.
Etta’s was the one place the McGinty family could go and really truly be treated as guests. It was a taste of the good life for all of us, because we hosted almost every holiday that she didn’t, which meant one week of hell, leading up to one very miserable day, followed by a week of exhaustion and regret! My dad would be mad that my mom had such a huge family. My mom would be mad at my dad, that he still hadn’t finished drywalling the first-floor bathroom!
There would be job lists daily for us kids, and there would be no fun or friends until these tasks were done. It meant cleaning rooms that were never going to be seen and vacuuming under furniture that was never going to be moved. It meant eight people still needing a shower as the first guests make their way up the driveway, carrying snacks that would be ground into oriental rugs and beverages that would be spilled onto furniture we were not even allowed to sit on!
Etta’s house was ninety degrees year-round. In winter, coats would be stacked high on her bed, where somehow, they would retain their cool temperature. Later, any heat-exhausted casualties could find relief in that heap of wool, cotton, and fur. Of course, I think it was the twenty different perfumes and colognes on the coats that snapped the weary back into full consciousness…like smelling salts!
Never before and not since, have I seen a furnace quite like Etta’s. It sat plain as a piece of furniture in her living room, three feet high, four feet long, and two inches away from eminent disaster at all times! I can remember sitting, paralyzed in fear, looking for any adult to tell me that the roar of the furnace wouldn’t lead to an explosion and that the blue flames wouldn’t shoot out far enough to set my chair on fire!
It was rare to see Etta before dinner was served. She would yell hello from the kitchen, and if she had use for you, you’d be called into that tiny little sweat lodge. If you were asked to help, you did your job quickly, and you got out fast…you had to!
My father would be summoned immediately upon our arrival. He had the sacred honor of making highballs for everyone. Occasionally, I would be called in to whisk the tall slippery glasses out of the kitchen and into the hands of anxiously awaiting aunts and uncles, before the ice had completely melted. I can remember standing in the doorway, watching the steam trickle down the foggy windows and walls. Etta would be hunched over in a chair, with her elbows resting above her knees, peeling potatoes with a paring knife and letting them plop down, into a stock pot of water that sat on the floor between her feet… where the oxygen was!
TV trays dotted the living room, topped with bowls of chips, well, the ones that weren’t permanently affixed to the laps of certain cousins, and the coveted Lawson’s French Onion Dip, THE symbol of wealth in Irish society, in Ohio anyway! There was usually a sweaty cheese plate and a platter of vegetables and dip that only ever seemed to interest the toddlers and more for painting the curtains than for eating!
It was a traumatic thing for us kids to have to keep our holiday best dresses and tights, suits and ties on, in a house so terribly hot. All it would take, was one cousin to get permission from one parent to change into their play clothes, and we would all be liberated. We could then get busy hurting each other or hurting ourselves by playing bloody outdoor games like dodgeball, spud, or 500. Oh yes, these games under normal circumstances are relatively harmless, but we were Irish… West Side Irish! When you threw a ball, you aimed at the head. If someone fell going after a ball, you used them as leverage, and if someone really got seriously hurt, you would call them names while dragging them off the field! With 22 first cousins on this side of the family alone, someone was always on the sidelines waiting to take your place.
Etta’s estate consisted of three houses. Hers was the biggest and sat on the rear of the property facing Church Avenue, a quiet tree-lined street. There was a grassy courtyard between Etta’s and the other two houses, but we chose to play in the parking lot next door, full of potholes, gravel, and broken glass, with no fence dividing it from the fast-moving traffic of Detroit Avenue or the occasional slow-moving junkie or prostitute! (This was before we learned to politely refer to them as addicts and sex workers!)
Being called into dinner was painful for us and our parents. We never wanted it to end, whatever we were playing. We begged for one more round or inning or turn. Parents would have to grab their kids and corral them. We would actually have to be herded into the house like cattle. First aid would be applied to the wounded by the gentler parents, however, most would have no sympathy and would yank glass out of skinned knees saying, “Well, what did you expect?” or “Shake it off! Quit being such a baby!”
The sun always seemed to be setting, as we’d sit down to dinner. The gold wallpaper of the dining room would appear to catch fire, as the sun rays danced among the crystal goblets, behind the glass doors of the china cabinet that was always locked.
The long, oval dining table would be set to its maximum capacity with grandmother’s china, heavy ornate silverware, glass tumblers with gold designs, and silver candelabras with festive candlesticks depicting the season or nearest holiday. Young children would fight for the privilege of lighting the candles, then fight again later, to blow them out.
Stretched through to the living room and into the family room, would be every card table, TV table, end table, and coffee table, lined up in a row, with everything from folding chairs and highchairs to lazy boy recliners pulled up to the tables to provide an array of choices for the children to fight over! Age and height were bargaining chips. Young or short cousins could expect to straddle the legs under the table or share a wobbly piano bench with another peewee. Territory was marked by the licking plates and silverware. We were savages!
It wasn’t much better for the adults. Etta always sat at the head of the table nearest to the kitchen door and my Aunt Nancy always sat next to her, in what I like to call, the martyr chair. Anything that was forgotten or anything that needed refilling would be filled by the martyr, a job that I’d always felt would be made easier if the gravy boat and water pitcher traded rolls. Inevitably their dinner would be cold and the salt, pepper, and butter would be a room away at the kid’s table by the time they needed it…But they will have a place in heaven!
I don’t know if any family is as hard on their in-laws as the Irish… Especially, if they are not Irish! The in-laws could count on two things being handed to them; any food that had fallen on the floor or been undercooked or overcooked or was damaged or broken in any way would surely find its way onto their plate! They could also expect to be stuck, holding the heaviest platter of food, just as Etta would begin saying Grace. With no room on the table to possibly set it down, they would be forced to balance the platter with one hand and bless themselves with the other, all the while getting disapproving stares! The newer the in-law, the more special intentions added at the end of the prayer!
Etta embodied Ireland. Whether she was raising a glass with an elegant toast, or raising her fist with a sincere threat, she was generous. A storyteller, full of grit and grace, a fighter and a lover, she was fiercely independent and funny as hell. She made feeding an army look effortless. It’s no wonder that the local priest Father DiNardo, was always stopping by for cake, coffee, and delightful conversation. She seemed to always have another plate of food, or another slice of cake, for any drifters that just happened to be passing through her estate.
She played piano and sang to us after dinner. She shared all of herself with us, but if you were still lingering when her shows came on, Murder She Wrote and Matlock, you dared not get in her way or make a sound. She’d fall into her lazy boy recliner, cleverly disguised by lace doilies and satin pillows and she’d yell to my mom and aunts who were washing and drying dishes, “Just leave those, I can finish them tomorrow!” Then she’d smile at us adorably, letting us know with a wink that she didn’t mean it! I think my mom enjoyed that part of the evening the most, catching up with her sisters.
Finally, we would be told to collect our things and wait by the door, when the adults decided the party was over. That was usually when someone would bring up a very interesting or controversial topic that would go on forever, and there we’d be waiting, hyperthermia setting in! Just when we thought we’d be heading to the car, someone would inevitably need to go potty or worse!
My dad always took the long way home, cruising slowly down Edgewater Drive, as we kids would slip into our cake and Pepsi-induced sugar comas. He and my mom would ooh and aah at all the grand old homes lining the coast of our great lake. I imagine they would have been holding hands, daydreaming of what it would be like to live in a mansion, watching those magnificent sunsets over Lake Erie. Then, glancing back at us, sharing a deflating laugh and a mutual understanding, that it’s never gonna happen! Looking at us at that moment, asleep in the back of the car, quiet and looking angelic in the glow of the street lamps, we probably seemed worth the sacrifice!
The End!
Merry Christmas, Bridget, thank you for your newsletter. It’s nice hearing your past come to life. Enjoy this glorious day!
Never knew you were related to Etta! I lived on Church in the early 70's and knew her not not close. Have a great Holiday. What an interesting life you have led. FY Bill Merriman who has lived on Church forver still lives there just turned 80.