Greek?

"Are you a teenager now?", I asked my almost eight-year old son when he woke up after having slept from 9pm until noon the next day. "You were right, mom (!!!), I was really tired", he replied almost sheepishly, looking up at me from under his summer-cut short bangs. Well, that was a first...!


Today we are grilling a lamb. Not a leg of lamb or a couple of lamb chops but one whole lamb - and no, we are not Greek. Buying a whole or half animal at a time is nothing new for my parents; at the same (or different) time there might be half a cow/pig/lamb, chicken (duh), elk, reindeer (yup, Rudolph is YUM!) or why not a 2 1/2 kg (4.4lbs) bag of cod in the freezer. To have a whole lamb wrapped up in a black plastic trash bag in the wine/food cellar is new and almost a little Godfathery creepy.
How this grilling is going to happen is still unclear, it won't fit on the Weber that's for sure, but luckily my very competent brother-in-law, who used to be a chef, is in charge.


The reason for this feast is that the whole Andersson/Bengtsson and Persson clan is coming over, i.e my brother and sister and their families. My brother and his family are going on holiday and we won't see them for the next three weeks so it's a big family reunion.


All of my family members have at one time or another visited us during our years as expats. Our very first visitors were my mom and her mom, my grandmother Gun, who came to see us in Beijing in October 1997. My grandmother was 77 at the time and in great vigor and health.


We did everything during those weeks; visited the Great Wall, went shopping at both the silk and pearl market, had dinner at Li Family restaurant (http://www.regenttour.com/chinaplanner/pek/bj-food-li.htm), went to October fest at Lufthansa Center, saw Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City (a.k.a. the big university by my grandmother), went to all the temples and palaces and finally enjoyed the foliage at Fragrant Hills Park (Xiangshan Park http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/beijing/fragrant.htm). It was a beautiful day, clearish blue skies; a myriad of people had traveled to see the changing of the maple leafs from green to orange and  fiery red. While my mom and I took the cable car to view the scenery from above, my grandmother stayed put on the ground, enjoying the interaction with the thousands of visitors who come each day during the fall. While the sun was nice and warm there was a chill in the air and she managed to catch a cold. 


It started out as sniffles but she quickly got worse and we finally had to take her to the international clinic for some professional help and medicin. She got better and after one extended week of their holiday they could travel home.


My grandmother later visited us in Tokyo where we had to go to the emergency room after she fell flat on her face while crossing the street and in Annecy, France, where we also had to go to the doctor  for some reason that I can't remember. This didn't stop her though, she stayed activeup until the very end and I treasure the memories of our travels. 


She would have loved to watch the spectacle of grilling a whole lamb. She would probably have witnessed it happen before in Spain or Prague or Canada or the Soviet Union which they visited way before it collapsed and become the Russia as it is today. She was some lady, my grandmother; opinionated, passionate, stubborn and curios with a big heart and an open mind, afraid of nothing. When she came to see us in Japan I had arranged for travel services for her at the airport, little did I know that that meant picking her up in a wheelchair at the gate. That didn't face her though, she steered the driver straight to the tax free shop so she could pick up the bottle of whiskey she was bringing us to treat us to Irish coffee.