The Heimlich Maneuver at Dusk: Christmas Dinner at My House

Twas the night of Christmas and I was on my third bottle of Franziskaner, which is the proper elixir for gatherings of a family nature, when my mother called us to the dinner table. I was seated beside my Grandfather who was decked out in a brown polyester suit that was stained in the front with a white crystalline substance that I was glad I didn’t have the lab results of. I pushed the center piece, which was adorned with several candles, away from our side of the table for fear his suit would go up in flames if he brushed up against it.

Before anyone could say grace he was elbows deep in plate of prime rib. Bits of potato and beans and meat flew from the sides of his mouth pelting me. I tried to resist this onslaught with my raised forearm but soon realized that such a efforts were not going to stop the slip and grind of his cockeyed dentures, which at one point came unhinged and slipped out of the side of his mouth landing in my mashed potatoes. I would have tried to push them back with a fork but was afraid that with the ferocity he was attacking his food that I might lose a digit in the process.

At eighty-three my Grandfather’s appetite is that of a man half his age and twice his weight. I suspect he brought back an intestinal parasite from his retirement community in Florida, probably from wading in a stagnant pond looking for a miss hit golf ball.

“Could you pass the butter,” he asked in his gravely voice.

Everyone’s eyes at the table zeroed in on the butter for they knew that if they wanted any they would have to get to the plate before my grandfather did.

“Look, I think I saw snow,” my aunt said, trying to distract my Grandfather from the butter plate in hopes that maybe one or two people could get a thin pat of it to butter their bread but my grandfather was not so easily distracted. For one thing he can’t hear much of anything even with his new hearing aids which looked like cell phones pushed half way into his ears so when my aunt tried to distract him with the prospect of snow I doubt he could hear her. For another thing he goes into a Buddihst Zen eating state in which he hums loudly while shoveling in food. I believe this aids in relaxing his diaphragm so that he can take in twice the amount of food as a normal human being in one bite.

“How about I serve you some butter?” I said.

My Grandfather grabbed the plate of butter from me with dexterity that belied his eighty-three years and had hacked into the last stick before I even knew what had happened.

Everyone sighed when they saw he’d only taken a pat of butter about half an inch thick. I broke a roll in half, my mouth salivating in anticipation of the creamy butter I was about to spread across it but then my Grandfather did the unthinkable. He put the little piece of butter back on the plate and took the ¾ of a stick still there, sandwiched it between to rolls and bit into it and before anyone could say Yule log he swallowed the entire thing.

“Would anyone like more potatoes?” my mother asked.

My Grandfather nodded yes and my mother replenished the eight inch pyramid that had just disappeared from his plate. It seemed a good portion of these potatoes were ending up on his chin and the lapel of his polyester suit. I’ve noted that as he’s grown older less of his food makes it to his mouth and more of it ends up on his chin and clothing. At a wedding not long ago I witnessed my grandfather eat potato salad off his shoe with a seafood fork. He also had three or four rolls, several sets of silverware, some celery, a pat or two of butter and a napkin in his suit coat, which he commenced to pull out of his pockets at awkward times throughout the day.

"Jesus Christ this is good," my Grandfather said, as he shoveled another bite of potato into his mouth.

Dinner continued on in usual manner with jokes and insults going back and forth across the table. My Grandfather seemed oblivious to it all and if it weren’t for the humming and the smacking of his dentures I might have forgotten he was beside me at all until I heard my aunt yell.

“I think Dad is choking,” she said.

My Step-Grandmother continued to eat, chewing in the slow, mechanical way she does.

“Dad, are you all right?” my Mother asked.

My Grandfather grabbed at his throat, his eyes bugged out. He stood and wobbled uneasily on his white loafers.

“Someone do something,” my sister, who was holding my baby niece, said.

My mother shot up like an agitated weasel while we all sat around slack jawed. At five feet two inches tall and weighing in the neighborhood of 120 pounds my mother came up from behind my six foot one grandfather, pulled him out of his chair and locked him in the preliminary Heimlich maneuver and then hoisted him up by shooting her hips out and driving her clenched fists into his abdomen.

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” was the noise that that came from my Grandfather’s mouth.

“Do you need help?” I asked.

“Is he all right?” my step grandmother asked, as she pushed another forkful of prime rib into her mouth.

My Grandfather continued to grab at his throat and my Mother again hoisted my Grandfather in the air and rammed her fists into his abdomen.

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, my Grandfather said, and then “huphhhhhhhhhhhh,” and then something that looked like a wet sock came shooting out his mouth, across the table and onto my aunt’s plate and then he puked on the table. His dentures slipped out of his mouth and fell into the gravy boat.

“Could you pass the gravy?” my Step Grandmother asked.

Undaunted by his near fatal experience with prime rib my Grandfather sat back down, located his pie, which had been spared by his projectile vomiting and commenced to eat it.

“Is there any whipped cream?” he asked.

My step-Grandmother doused his pie with a twelve inch spire of whipped cream and he attacked his pie as if he hadn’t just eaten, nearly choked to death, and then puked.

My cousin ran into the bathroom and barfed. My Mother slumped back in her chair exhausted.

I pushed my plate away and tried not to notice that my Grandfather was gumming a piece of pie that was sitting in the middle of a puddle of vomit.

“What do you say we open presents?” I said.