The Season of Giving AWAY: Nutty Family

Christmas Day was always one of my most favorite days of the whole year long. My sister and I would wake up early and see what Santa had left us. Then we'd all load up into the car and drive down to my Aunt Liz and Uncle John's home in Mounds, OK, where my mom's sister and her other brother and their families would also gather for food and presents and more food. When we were all together, there were 16 of us. It was always a great day.


One particular Christmas in the mid-1980s found Garry spending Christmas with the McKelvey's. Garry was my aunt Liz's mother--my cousin Larry and Billy's grandma. I don't know how old Garry was this Christmas, but I was a teenager, so in my mind, she must have been pushing 100. She was very, very sweet, though. She had gotten all the grandkids--not just Larry and Billy--a five dollar bill. She put each fiver in an envelope with our name on it and let the envelopes in a big bowl of nuts that my aunt Liz had set out for everyone to crack and eat ... kind of a pre-appetizer.

Larry and Billy lived there, so I don't know if they had an envelope there or not, it wasn't in the bowl of nuts when we got there. Maggie and Andy came and got their envelopes. When my sister and I got there, Billy told us we had something special from his grandma in the bowl of nuts. Because there was a pretty hard rule that we would not open presents until the very last minute--a rule the grown-ups created to see if the kids would actually explode--it was super cool (or totally gnarly - mid-1980s, remember?) that we got these envelopes right at the start of the day. Eventually, the last of the cousins, Whitney and Courtney arrived from Oklahoma City.

"Garry got us presents!" we all squealed. Courtney ran ahead of Whitney and snagged her envelope. Whitney, who was probably 10 or so at the time, casually walked into the dining room and saw her name on the envelope in the bowl of nuts. She picked up the nuts ... the entire bowl of nuts ... and politely walked over to Garry and said, in a loud and slow voice that is normally reserved for old people or foreigners, "T h a n k  y o u  f o r  t h e  n u t s. I  l o v e  n u t s  s o  m u c h."

As cousins, we gently took her to the side and explained to her that the nuts weren't hers. Oh wait. That's not what we did at all. Not. At. All.

I think we laughed loudly and pointed. I believe Billy might have even called her a dumb ass because he was probably about 12 years old and cool like that. "The nuts aren't yours!" we all guffawed. Then we all might have whispered, "Dumb ass."

Whitney, however, insisted that she did love nuts and she'd love to take that bowl of nuts home.

As far as I know she did not take the nuts home. I'm also pretty sure she didn't use her $5 from Garry to buy herself the nuts that she loved so much.

So today, in honor of Whitney, and because I will be going on Saturday to see all my cousins and their kids--now there are 41 or 42 of us--I'm giving away 10 lbs of cracked (but not cleaned) pecans from my friends at Schaper Pecan Farms.

If you'd like to order pecans through Schaper Pecan Farms, LLC, Facebook them--they ship anywhere within the continental US. If you mention that Minivan Momma sent you, you'll get an extra pound free with your paid order.

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