Butterball Grandma

Cherese tells the story of an upside-down Thanksgiving and the unexpected sweet voice that brought her back home and changed her perspective on what exactly that meant.

Hey, friends, this is Cherese Lee and you're listening to the Just Waiting for You Podcast. Whether the sun is shining where you are in life today or you're walking through a crappy storm and you really wish you got some rain boots. The power of a story is sometimes all you need for that perspective shift. Hang out with us for a few minutes and find out what happens when you realize that someone is just waiting for you.

It's a story. It's just a story. Thanksgiving of 2005 was an interesting one. Brandon my husband was in his third year of residency in Pittsburgh, and in their program, every resident did a two-month rotation in New Mexico where they had a partnership with a VA hospital. The program provided a really cute little (I would say eighties-esk) furnished apartment for the residents.

And of course, families were welcome if they wanted to go and were able. We'd been thinking and planning about this pretty much the entire time we lived in Pittsburgh because we knew that it was coming. And of course, plan and plan as we tried, the best-laid plans are, well, hilarious. Luke ended up having some medical issues which required him to be close to home for a couple of weeks into the time that we were supposed to be out west.

So, Brandon packed up and went on and started his rotation. Anyone who knows a medical resident knows that there are no excuses for not showing up, and sadly, this certainly wasn't one either. I'm not sure who was more upset about the situation- Brandon, who was leaving his fresh post-op little one and his exhausted wife, or me who was at home with a fresh post-op two-year-old and another two-year-old and a four-year-old.

It definitely was not what we had planned. Luckily, Luke was released from medical care just in time for us to get our ticket switched around and make it out there the day before Thanksgiving. Now, when I say make it out there, what I mean is around 4 a.m. the day before Thanksgiving my saint of a neighbor picked us up.

Me, three little ones and one suitcase. I had the perfect plan on that as well, of course. I decided that there was enough room for each of us to take three outfits. If I rolled the clothes up into those little rollie balls then I would have room in a suitcase for a pair of shoes for each of us too in addition to the ones we were wearing.

I was very excited about this fact. I figured the one suitcase thing would be great for two reasons. One, of course, I would only have to pay to check one bag, and number two, I could manage one suitcase with three kids, four and under. Right? I had my backpack full of snacks, activities for the plane. But either way, by the time I made it to Albuquerque that evening, when Brandon picked us up, we were done.

He took us to the apartment, and he was so proud. He had gotten it all ready for us. He had bought the kids’ favorite snacks, and he had, per my request, bought all the things so I could fix Thanksgiving dinner the next day. Now the me of now realizes that this was completely insane on multiple levels.

We were in a rental apartment. I was still a pretty novice cook, I would say. I had made a turkey one other time in my life. We were exhausted. We'd been in and out of the hospital. It just-I don't know why I felt the need to do this (actually, that's probably not true. I think I probably do know why. I needed some normalcy.)

I needed Thanksgiving. I needed the holiday to seem wonderful and homey and real and probably a little too much like a Hallmark movie. Well, we get up Thanksgiving morning because no matter the exhaustion, we all know there's no sleeping in with little ones. And we have the parade on. The boys are toddling all around, getting to know their new temporary home.

And I start pulling out the things to make Thanksgiving dinner to start prepping. Now, this was a furnished apartment furnished by the university. That said, it was mostly things that had been curated by medical residents over the years. You can imagine the amount of cooking that these poor, exhausted, overworked individuals were able to do. So needless to say, there was no giant roasting pan for this turkey that I requested my husband purchase for us.

Also, why did I even think there would be a giant roasting pan for a turkey? Anyway, when I bring this up, Brandon says that he too had noticed that in prepping. And he was so proud because he had purchased a disposable roasting pan. To me, I felt like this was ridiculous. There's no way you could cook a turkey in what appears to be basically some flattened aluminum foil.

I mean, granted, the picture on the piece of paper stuck to the pan was of a turkey. I just was in disbelief. I'd never seen my mom do it. My grandmother, my mother-in-law, his grandmother. None of these people cooked a turkey in a disposable pan. And I don't know why I was so fixated on why this wasn't going to work. But I needed this turkey to be perfect. I needed Thanksgiving. I needed something normal.

Well, this was pre-google. So, I did what any smart person in this situation would do. I called the Butterball hotline that's right there on the package. What I expected was some culinary experts wearing a headset at a large call center. And what I got on the other end of the phone was as opposite from that as could be and was actually so much better. Answering the phone at the Butterball hotline on Thanksgiving Day was the sweetest, most grandmotherly voice you have ever heard.

But it gets better. You could tell from the background noise that she was at home. Now, that might not sound like a big thing right now because so many people work from home now. But at the time, nobody worked from home in 2005 and certainly not a grandmother. The background sounds were one of the best parts of the conversation because it sounded like Thanksgiving.

You could hear kids running around in the background, some squealing. I heard a dog. You could hear people chattering and laughing. In my mind, I was immediately put into this woman's kitchen. I could see the adult kids sitting at the table with their coffee cups, catching up and laughing about old jokes, and the cousins and running around, so excited to be together and so much pent-up energy.

And then this grandmother stirring gravy on the stove top. I imagine that the kitchen just smelled like turkey and was warm even though the windows were frosty with that morning sun coming through. It sounded amazing. It sounded like home. It sounded like where I wanted to be right at that moment. So, I proceed to explain my question and my issue to this lovely Butterball grandma and the more I started to talk about this disposable pan, the more I just started telling her all kinds of things.

I felt the need to explain that now, I knew normally what to do with the turkey. Because I have to admit, at this phase of my life, because everything was so out of control, I don't know, it's like I had this need to appear as if I had everything under control. So, I tell grandma (Butterball grandma) that, you know, I cooked a turkey once before.

And really the only issue is this pan. And it wouldn't be an issue except that we're in this apartment and I don't even have a neighbor to ask because I don't know anyone in the state. I've never been here in my life. I'm just out here with these little kids. And my husband came, and he bought this pan because he had to come two weeks before us.

And then we came yesterday, and we were exhausted and oh, God bless this grandma. I just I can only imagine her face as she's listening to me ramble on in my sheer panic, all the while sounding very much in control and probably wishing she could just get back to stirring her gravy and visiting with her kids. But she listened to all of it.

And then when I finally shut up, she said, “oh, honey, this is going to be great, actually. I bet it's going to be even better than it usually is.” I still don't know if she was talking about the turkey or the entire situation. She talked me through. She offered to give me an in-service on Turkey roasting because I'm pretty sure she saw right through me.

I didn't have a clue what I was doing. She gave me all kinds of tips and tricks that I wish I would have written down. But in the end, the biggest thing was that she told me that she was just excited for me. She said, “Actually, I'm just so glad that you're making a turkey. This is going to be wonderful!”

When I got off the phone and told the story to my family, we had the best giggle about me disturbing that poor grandma on Thanksgiving. And yet, how completely wonderful she was! She started to change my perspective. This is going to be great. This is maybe even going to be better than it normally is. We had decided before we went out there that we wouldn't decorate for the holidays because I mean, we were on a pretty tight budget.

We knew that there wouldn't be decorations there, and we just felt that it would be wasteful to spend money on Christmas decorations when we weren't going to actually be there for Christmas morning, we would be coming back home just before that. But after our Thanksgiving celebration that I worked so hard to make seem normal and movie-like, we all realized how much we needed that.

So on Black Friday, off we went. My husband, myself and three little kids. And we got the cutest, least expensive Christmas tree. Some lights and some ornaments. We let the kids color stockings and we taped them up in that apartment. And the next thing you know, it was home. It was Thanksgiving. It was Christmas. It didn't look like a Hallmark movie, but it looked perfect.

Maybe the holidays are being spent this year where you want them to be or with who you want them to be with. And that's okay. It's okay to say that. It's okay to feel that. It's also okay to go ahead and get that Walmart Christmas tree knowing that you'll never use it again (maybe). Color some stockings and tape them on the wall in the kitchen because there is no fireplace, and add some twinkle lights.

Oh, and maybe most importantly, it's okay to ask for help (whether that be the Butterball grandma on Thanksgiving morning or your neighbor that you've never met). Sometimes what you need is permission to want the magic twinkle lights and the reminder that, maybe this is going to be great. Maybe this is even going to be better than how it's always been.

Thanks for joining us. I hope you allow yourself to feel the things today and then have the courage to ask, “But what if it looks like this?”

Go forth and show up for life my friends. Someone is just waiting for you.