Week 26 of 2024’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge is “Family Gathering.”
“Soup Day” was my favorite day of the week. The family tradition began sometime in the mid-1980s and lasted through the early 2000s. On Saturdays the LaViolets gathered at Nana Connie and Grampy Phil’s house to eat lunch and spend time together. Every week someone took a turn making a big pot of soup to share. Sometimes it was Nana’s chicken soup made with whatever ingredients she had on hand simmered in homemade chicken stock. My mom’s specialty was autumn soup cooked in a tomato base with ground beef and plenty of hearty root vegetables. It was Grampy Phil’s favorite. If we were really lucky, Aunt Judy made her famous fish chowder – the best any of us has ever eaten. No restaurant can compare. On a bad day (for the vocal few of us who detested it) pea soup with its baby-poop color and consistency was on the menu.
If the soup of the day wasn’t to your liking, plenty of other delicious yummies were available. Everyone brought something to share. We often had chicken salad eaten on crackers or tiny rolls. Nana sliced hotdogs, fried them until they were plump, and stuck fancy toothpicks in them for the little kids to eat. Someone usually brought a dessert, but if not, my grandparents kept a supply of Little Debbie snack cakes in stock -- a vast improvement over the dry fig newtons the first iteration of grandchildren (the OG 5) had to endure. Occasionally Nana made her cinnamon rolls – pie dough brushed with butter and covered with cinnamon and sugar, which she either rolled up or twisted into sticks. Grampy was in charge of making the tea – always Red Rose – and as a true Depression-era child, he dried the teabags out and reused them. He boasted that he could get 2-3 uses out of each. If you wanted sugar with your tea, he had this near-magical ability to precisely pour an exact teaspoon from his restaurant-style sugar jar.
Soup Day was an open-house event, and everyone was welcome. While the usual crowd included at least half of my aunts, uncles, and cousins, it was common for one or two friends, neighbors, or extended family members to drop by. The more, the merrier! It always felt like one big party. If we had something to celebrate like a birthday or anniversary, even better! We added a cake and balloons to the festivities. Just being together on most Saturdays was enough of a reason to celebrate. When you entered the wood-paneled lower level of Nana and Grampy’s split-level home on Soup Day, you were met with delicious aromas, loud voices competing with one another to gossip or share stories, children running around, warm hugs, and lots and lots of laughter. A feeling of overwhelming love and acceptance enveloped you whether you were a LaViolet family member or a stray we adopted for the day. As crazy and chaotic it was on Saturdays, there’s nowhere on earth I felt such a sense of peace. It was one of the best parts of growing up in that family.
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