We’re coming up on Thanksgiving, and with all this reminiscing I’ve been doing, I had this flashback to a Thanksgiving I haven’t thought about for many years. I was 8. Mom had arranged a beautiful veggie tray with her Dill Dip made with Beau Monde seasoning. (It was probably MSG, but we didn’t know about its vices yet.)
I was enjoying the veggies and dip when my Grandma Vernie said “If you keep eating like that, you’re going to get fat.”
Um, okay. I loved my Grandma Vernie with all my heart. I looked up into her face, and she wasn’t looking at me with disdain, but she was scrutinizing me, like she could see the veggie dip plumping up my fat cells in real time.
Mom heard the whole thing. She pulled me into my bedroom with a lame excuse about looking for a gravy boat, which we don’t keep in my bedroom, and explained the filter to me. “The human filter deteriorates with age,” she said, “so you can’t really hold her accountable for how comments come out. She means well.”
I had watched Mom gaining weight with the prednisone she’d been prescribed. I’d heard Grandma make concerned comments about Mom’s weight, and I decided right then I would never lose my filter.
But her words held truth. She couldn’t know that I would, indeed, gain weight. She couldn’t know that Dill Dip was a gateway dip that would eventually lure the entire country into a ranch dressing addiction. She couldn’t know that my DNA test would reveal I was genetically predisposed to be “heavyset” and “taller than average.” She couldn’t know that it was Mom’s prednisone that was puffing her up. She was simply paying attention to her family by warning them about the dangers she saw ahead. And, ultimately, I have so many amazing Thanksgiving memories of my Grandma Vernie, that this one Filter Fail got buried beneath her Thanksgiving Green Beans and her weird but undeniably festive Thanksgiving Salad and how she felt Thanksgiving was really the first day of Christmas.
In advance of my own filter deterioration, may I now pre-apologize for any disparaging comments I may make. I promise I’m holding onto my filter as long as I can. #momscompanytowels #checkyourfilter #dilldipgatewaytoranch
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