I come from a family of beatniks, criminals, bikers and brawlers. Our ethnic mix is Irish, German and Native American, so to say that heavy drinking at our family gatherings is status quo is like saying, “Niagara falls? Isn’t that like a waterfall or something?”
Yeah, a definite understatement of the obvious.
Now, keeping the aforementioned in mind, try to also keep in mind my family is a matriarchy, and up until a couple of years ago was ruled by my great-grandmother, Nana. She and my great-grandfather had been married for over 76 years, and while he occasionally put his foot down, Nana was definitely the one in charge. Except for this one instance I vividly remember during the Christmas of 1980.
Now if you were a man married into the family, Nana would fawn over you. As a boy or a girl, if you were born into the family, you could never do any wrong. But woe unto you if you were a woman and married into the family.
Enter … my mother.
Toward the end of her life, my Nana and my mother got along really well, almost as if they were in a mother-daughter relationship. But those first few years were really rough. (The first few years being about 18 years long.)
Anyway, Nana had been at the bottle, as well as everyone else, and the longer the evening went on the more blatant Nana’s comments about my mother’s imperfections and shortcomings became. My mother, quiet and respectful, would just sit there and nod her head, not saying a word and occasionally smiling. Not a happy smile, mind you, but the kind that even to this day when I see it makes me want to run and hide behind something, preferably armor plated.
Nana’s comments continued until my father, whose patience was nowhere near my mother’s, stood up, took my hand, took my mother by the arm and said, “Well, you’ve made it really obvious how you feel about my wife, and if she’s not welcome, then we’re not welcome.”
Then he tried to leave and was stopped by my 80-year-old great-grandfather, who, slamming my father against the wall with one arm so hard he almost lifted him off the floor, used his other arm to shake his finger in my father’s face, saying (insert slurred Germanic accent), “Listen here, you little brat, if you’re gonna go, go, but yer not takin’ my Ira with ya.” He then dropped my father and spun around to shake his finger at my Nana, “And you, ya stubborn bitch, I told ya not to drink so much, GO TO BED!.”
And she did, as did we all.
Which gets us to the reason for this story, which is the next morning we awoke as we always did to my favorite post-Christmas Eve breakfast, Nana’s Logs. A simple recipe as follows:
Nana’s logs
Take one full-plate-sized, cold pancake from the fridge.
Spread a thin coat of butter or margarine, whatever your preference, all over one side of the pancake.
Then sprinkle a light dusting of cinnamon and sugar on the buttered side of the pancake. Roll pancake into a log and eat.