Mother of four Anita Cahill, 54, reported early this week that she “absolutely cannot wait to micro-manage the ever living shit out of setting the table” come Thanksgiving.
The Natick, Massachusetts woman reports that she is “really looking forward to” asking her adult children to fold the napkins however they want, before exhaling loudly, looping back around the table, and refolding them herself.
Eldest daughter Frances, 26, wistfully recounts, “There’s nothing quite like seeing how excited my mom gets around the holidays…the way her eyes light up when she sees a knife or a spoon sitting in the wrong place.”
“One of my favorite holiday traditions is setting some mulled cider on the stove, turning on Sinatra, and needling my four children incessantly about why they didn’t dust before they put down the tablecloth,” says Cahill. “Dusting is a dying art.”
Cahill notes that while she’s “just ecstatic” about the possibility of asking her children why the hell they left the gravy in the Tupperware container it was heated in instead of rummaging through the garage for a box labeled ‘GRAVY BOAT,’ she “truly dreams” of seeing the confused looks on their faces when she insists they take out the “good candles.”
“Every year, we ask her how she wants us to set the table, and every year, she says ‘Oh! However you guys want to is fine, I’m sure it’ll look great,” says 19-year-old James Cahill. “By the time we actually end up eating, the table looks absolutely nothing like we set it, but we all know better than to suggest from the start that she just tell us how she wants it done.”
After a recent trip to The Christmas Tree Shop and the purchase of a cornucopia, paper turkeys, and 9 decorative gourds, Anita Cahill says that for 2016, “The possibilities are endless.”
“This year, I have something really special planned,” Cahill says. “I’m going to send them on a four man search party for ‘the other wine glasses.'”
“My secret? There are no other wine glasses.”
