Relative Insanity

This time of year, millions of us pack up our respective families and mates and hit the road, sea and skies to return to our family homes. We take with us petulant children, traumatized pets and our own way of living. And, with 45 first cousins and an “open door” policy, that's wherein the problem lies for the Sherrill clan.

Oh, my momma, Jojo, does her best to tidy up ye olde homestead before our arrival, but since she should be on HGTV's Clean Sweep's most­wanted list, her idea of tidying up is usually a two-hour game of hide the vacuum, hide the unfolded clothes (a Mt. Kilimanjaro-sized pile of thrift store finds) and hide the mess (this often involves calling on neighbors with garages not packed to the ceiling). Momma Jojo may be up late at night buying caulking, cleaning agents and Swiffer knockoffs from dubious Australian TV hawkers, but none have actually been used. My daughter, Anabelle, and I descend as a two-woman cleaning service. Dressed in matching Juicy Couture tracksuits, we emerge looking more like Bosnian mineworkers when we finish after 14 hours of grueling torture, the perfume of Windex leaving a trail in our wake.

Thanksgiving Day sees the descent of the Mongolian hordes. With the smokers taking claim to the upstairs, the air soon has the quality of an old Tammany Hall meeting and then, after some nominal skirmishing about football and screamed accusations about manliness, family honor and IQ tests, the real trouble starts to bubble like Grandmother Nanny's old Depression-era tub of moonshine.

As various relatives threaten to draw arms from trucks and Lexuses, a cousin, one of the five M.D.s in residence, suggests another serving of turkey, winking at me about the tryptophan in each heaping helping, which will surely be cause for naps before the big game starts.

As always, Jojo's timing couldn't be more perfect. Having just located the missing cranberry sauce, she promptly serves it up. In her mind, the can indentations form “a lovely design” atop a fine piece of Sevres that was used as a dog plate for her special Boston terrier, Shug. After all, the dogs are the only ones in that family that really enjoy cranberries. The rest of us are united over pumpkin pie.