The 30th of December was my paternal grandparents' wedding anniversary. In my childhood -- and into my young adulthood -- that was the occasion for our big family gathering, when we'd take the train to Leicester to spend the day with them and the two sets of uncles, aunts and cousins on that side of the family. With anything up to eight adults and seven children in one smallish house -- mostly in one room -- it was always cosy, even in the American sense. There were always chocolates passed around, and gifts exchanged, and new photographs taken and old ones shared; usually party games organized by the younger aunt; sometimes a slide show; usually a fair amount of boring grown-up talk about people I didn't know. The most constant, memorable thing, though, was tea. A real, Yorkshire-style high tea, with salad and sausages-on-sticks and cold meats and pork pies and pickled onions and bread and jam and trifle and at least half a dozen different kinds of cake, one of which was an iced fruit cake with a plastic reindeer and tree on top. And Christmas crackers, out of which we'd extract and solemnly don the colourful tissue-paper crowns. That was the one meal of the year when my sister and I, used to a much more modest table, would overeat to the point of discomfort in an attempt to sample everything.
The tradition lasted until at least 1988 -- I know, because I have photos of the family gathered around the table, complete with my then-future brother-in-law -- but was scaled down after my grandparents moved to a retirement flat in Birmingham. We had one last gathering in 1993, in memory of my grandfather who had passed away a few weeks before his 60th wedding anniversary.
The 31st is my grandmother's birthday, traditionally observed by sending flowers. I think she'll be 94 tomorrow, frail and rather deaf but still very much alive and aware. I'll have to try and call her in the morning.
