Hostess Gifts

It must be a New England thing. When you invite someone over for dinner, they always want to bring something.

“What can I bring?”

“Just bring yourself.”

“No, seriously, salad? Bread? Desert? What can I bring?”

“Seriously, just bring yourself.”

It seems like people around here want every dinner to be a pot luck. This is all well and good most of the time. I like pot lucks. Everyone contributing, trying different dishes, we all provide, we all eat, we all enjoy a wonderful meal. But not for Thanksgiving.

My Thanksgiving dinner is just that…a dinner. It is not a pot luck. I do all the shopping, cooking and serving. My brother provides the location and makes sure it is clean and he also does all the dishes afterwards. It is a dinner, not a pot luck.

For years this has been an issue with our guests. They always want to bring something. A salad, rolls, appetizer, desert, etc. And, for years, they have tried to bring stuff even when we said they didn’t have to and that all would be provided.

One year one of our guests insisted on providing the turkey and stuffing. We gave in and said he could. The problem with this was that he lived in Massachusetts and cooked the turkey there. He roasted a stuffed turkey starting very early in the morning. He took it out of the oven around 11:00 am, wrapped it up in aluminum foil and bath towels, to keep it warm and then, around 1:00, headed up to Maine. We ate dinner around 4:30. So that turkey, with the stuffing inside, had been out of the oven for almost six hours. Needless to say, I really didn’t touch it. Just made me squeamish to think about a turkey that had been left out that long. I just ate the sides that year. It was also the last time we accepted any help with the dinner.

This year we finally came up with a good explanation. It is a dinner, not a pot luck. You don’t need to bring anything, just show up. It’s a DINNER, not a POT LUCK!

Well, people still brought things, just nothing for dinner. Since I did all the cooking, I was the recipient of the gifts. I received two bottles of wine, a box of candy, a rose, a parsley plant, a small lantern and an apple tree.

Yes, an apple tree. A macintosh apple tree, to be exact.

The wine, candy and rose I can understand as hostess gifts. I can even understand the parsley plant. Possibly understand the lantern (small, red LLBean lantern). But an apple tree????

One of my brother’s friends walked in the door carrying the lantern, the parsley plant -in a pot – and the apple tree – also in a pot. The tree is only about eight inches high but it is definitely an apple tree. He, my brother’s friend, went into his backyard and dug up the parsley plant and the tree, put them in pots and brought them to Thanksgiving dinner.

I tried to give the tree to my brother since I live in an apartment and don’t have a yard and he does. But he didn’t want it. He said I should hang on to it, let it grow and then, when Cupid the Cat dies, I will have a fruit tree to plant on top of him.

It certainly is an interesting present. Unique. Much like my brother’s friend, who is a unique person.

I am looking forward to next year’s Thanksgiving dinner. The invitation will be that this is a dinner, not a pot luck, and, if you must bring something, bring a bottle of wine. The hostess (me) likes wine and I would consider that to be a great hostess gift. Not that I don’t like what I received this year. But a lot of wine would be a good thing!

An apple tree. Wow. I can say something really positive about it. Ten years from now, when I am picking apples in the fall from my tree, I can bake a pie for Thanksgiving and tell my brother’s friend where I picked the apples. It will have come full circle. And that sort of symmetry pleases me.