Willard and Sydney – 1938 in Oysterville

Laps.  Not the kind you do on the track or in the swimming pool.  The laps I’m talking about here are the kind you took for granted when you sat on the one belonging to your grandma.  It wasn’t until Christmas dinner just past that I had occasion to carefully consider laps and how most of us assume that people with two legs also have a perfectly useful lap.  It took a twenty-pound turkey to disabuse me of that thought.

As our friends and relatives all know, Nyel is the chef at our house.  Plus, he’s one of those chefs who isn’t one bit happy or grateful for offers of help in his kitchen — and that was true even in the days before he became wheelchair-bound.  Therefore, for Christmas dinner it was agreed that our guests would supply dessert (pies!  one pumpkin, one Marionberry!) and Nyel would do the rest.  So it was that he spent the day preparing a twenty-pound “young Tom” turkey, dressing, garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, roasted asparagus, green salad with Roquefort crumbles and pears, and the usual accompaniments of crudités and cranberry sauces.  He did allow a couple if us to carry the heaping serving dishes to the table but his plan went a bit awry when it came to getting the bird onto the platter.

Two Ovens!

It dawned on both of us that he might be in a little trouble when we realized he couldn’t lift that twenty-pound- bird (plus its ten-pound stainless steel roasting pan) from the lower (and largest) oven and and up to the counter.  I think he was planning on his lap as an intermediary stage… but wait!  Though Nyel has two legs, his left one is shorter by four inches — and not from the knee down.  The bone he lost was from his upper thigh to his pelvis, so his lap isn’t exactly level.  Not as in holding a twenty-pound panful of turkey (even if it hadn’t been hot! hot! hot!).

I don’t know when the penny dropped, but fortunately I was right there and managed to get that roaster up to the counter.  Nyel got Tom onto the platter and I schlepped him to the table.  That bird was absolutely gorgeous and tasted perfect.  I doubt that he even missed sitting  on Nyel’s lap!

But sometimes I do…