As a kid I knew that we would never go “Over the river and through the woods” to get to grandmother’s house because we were already there. We lived with my grandparents for the first thirteen years of my life while my parents were saving to buy a house of their own.

I loved living there. My grandmother, who we called Baba, made some really basic but really good food; cheese blintzes, sour dough blintzes, homemade kielbasy, rice soup, potato soup, raisin bread, jelly desert, etc. Travelling through Europe to escape Russia to get to the US made them make the most with the least. Everybody would always comment on how good Baba’s kitchen smelled.

Holidays were always special, especially Thanksgiving. My mom would make a turkey with stuffing. She’d boil potatoes and my older brother Frank would mash them adding butter and milk to make them really creamy. She would chop all the ingredients of the potato salad into a big stainless-steel bowl, and I would be the one to add the mayonnaise to make it taste just right. My dad would make some kind of hot vegetable like green beans. My grandmother would make her kielbasy and her kapusta, which was a cabbage dish with bacon and carrots that sweetened the taste a little. We’d also have tossed salad, mushroom salad, Lithuanian rye bread from the European Provision store. Speaking of which, we’d also have smoked kielbasy with a fresh jar of horseradish on the table. It truly was a feast.

I always thought white meat turkey was dry and tasteless even with gravy and a ton of pepper on it. I was more of a dark meat kid. I’d opt for a crispy wing, and if no one claimed the other wing by the time I was done with mine, I’d claim that too. My grandfather, who we called Dzied, always got a leg.

Also on my plate was a huge pile of mashed potatoes, an equal-sized portion of stuffing, Baba’s kielbasy with some kapusta, and a few of the hot vegetables because my dad would make sure we ate some. Salad was in a small bowl in front of us and we got to choose from three or four different bottled dressings.

About halfway through dinner my mom or dad would remember the cranberry sauce. They’d go to the pantry to retrieve the can, open it, and pour it out onto a small plate where is slowly melted away. My older brother, Frank, was the only person I knew who really ate any of it. Sometimes my mom would take a slice, especially if she was the one that remembered about it, and then after a bite or two it sat on her plate slowly melting away. I just didn’t like the stuff. I thought the sweetness ruined everything it touched on the plate. And the killer thing about cranberry sauce was that I could SEE everything it touched, and I just knew it was not going to taste good.

Dessert was usually a few store-bought pies or Baba’s cheese blintzes. If there was a choice of only one, cheese blintzes won every time. Heated up or cold, it didn’t matter, they were delicious.

Sometimes we’d have family come over to eat as well. After all, it was my grandparent’s house. All their kids (my aunts and uncle) lived in town, so they were pretty much obligated to stop by and they all had kids.

My Aunt Tosia and Uncle John had five: Maria, Vera, Tina, Sandi, and Stevie.

My Aunt Kasia and Uncle Serge had three: Natalie, Lena, and Kathy.

My Uncle Stanley and Aunt Annette had four: Judy, Paul, Lisa, and Mark.

Naturally they didn’t all visit at the same time. It was a small railway house with a kitchen at one end, a living room at the other end of the house and two bedrooms in between. The bathroom and pantry were off the kitchen.

When I got older I visited my grandparents and as I sat at the kitchen table I couldn’t imagine how we fit that many people into that house all those years ago. The rectangular kitchen table that we were sitting at had enough room for four people comfortably, six with two people squashed together at the longer sides. But… there was an extension that made the table about a foot longer. Back then, Dzied would bring in a bench that he built from outside by the clothesline and that would go along the kitchen wall freeing up the other two chairs to be distributed along the other three sides of the table. Corner place settings at this table were normal.

On the other wall they set up the smaller “kids table.” I think I sat there until I was four. At five I graduated my way to the adult table due to my conversational abilities and was thus able to hang with the adults, even if I didn’t understand half of what they were talking about.

Some people would make a plate and then go eat in the living room. That was a two-seater couch that you could cram three to four kids on. There were two chairs that were limited to one person each. Dzied’s rocking chair was the best chair you could sit on. We would call sitting on it just like calling “shotgun” in a car. And then there was the floor. Factoring all this in, I still don’t know how we fit all those people in the house. But we did and we were happy. We were together and that’s all that mattered.

As I kissed Baba and gave Dzied a hug goodbye, the ghostly sounds of adult conversations, clanging dinnerware, and screaming kids echoed in my ears. I may have even moved slightly to avoid the memory of a running toddler crashing into me. I took one last whiff of her kitchen locking in those glorious smells and headed out to my car forever thankful for my entire family, the great times we had, and the great memories we had created together all those years ago.

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