Whine & Twine & Eggnog

I wake just before 4am, stumble to the back door to let the dogs out - it's dark and moonless, freezing cold - and they trot bravely out while the cats begin the breakfast dance, twining around my ankles, always hungry, always in a hurry.  They don't care that it's 4am, surely an uncivilized time if ever there was one, or that it's winter.  The dogs are pawing at the back door and whining to come in before I've gotten the first package of Friskies poured.  I think about going back to bed but once morning has broken, even if it's in the the dead of night, there's no retreat.  I turn up the heat, light a cigarette, and pour a glass of eggnog from the glass bottle I bought on a whim last week.  Coffee would make more sense but I don't drink coffee and there's no hot chocolate and even if there was, I'm not functioning well enough to make it.  Eggnog will have to do.

Nana kept a carton of Hood's Eggnog in the fridge every week from Thanksgiving to New Year's.  Uncle Eddie liked to make his own, adding liberal doses of whiskey and paprika and serving it warm in small silver cups, but I liked store bought, ice cold and thick like syrup, so sweet it made my teeth ache.  There were dozens of brands to choose from but for Nana and I, only Hood's would do.  They were (and still are) a Massachusetts company that had doing business since the mid 1800's.  I doubt my grandmother much cared about the shop local trend - Hood's simply made the best dairy products and she was a fan - we drank Hood milk, used Hood cream and butter, and in the summer the freezer was packed with Hood ice cream and Hoodsie cups.  Nana would probably be distressed to know that I'm drinking non-Hood eggnog but probably pleased that it isn't up to her standards or mine.  She liked being right.

Being partial to Elsie the Cow, my mother was a Borden loyalist.  On more than one occasion, she would surreptitiously remove the Hood milk  (or cream or butter or eggnog or ice cream) and replace it with Borden's. Nana would fairly light up with rage at this dairy travesty - it was a sacrilege to move anything in the neatly organized refrigerator and not replace it exactly as you'd found it - and the ensuing feud could last for days.

You're fighting over dairy products?  my daddy had once asked incredulously,  The world is going to hell and you're fighting over milk?  Have you both lost your minds?

My house, Nana had snapped defiantly, My refrigerator!

Borden's is better! my mother had snarled back sullenly, and I paid for it!

THAT'S ENOUGH! my daddy had roared and both women had taken a startled step backwards, IT'S CHRISTMAS, GODDAM IT AND THAT'S ENOUGH!

 I don't care who bought it, he said tightly, and I don't care whose refrigerator it is!  It's Christmas and we're going to have some peace on earth around here if I have to drag it out of each of you so I recommend you get over it and get over it right now!

The women, sulking and glaring with indignation, got gone.

Milk, my daddy - a man who prized peace and quiet and diplomacy above everything - sighed and sank tiredly into a kitchen chair, I lost my temper over milk.

Sitting at my own kitchen table a lifetime later, the memory still makes me smile.  It doesn't warm me but it does make me smile.

The cats twine, the dogs whine and the eggnog is just another dairy product.