Heart of the Turkey

My dad used to wake me up on Thanksgiving morning to “help.” He surely didn’t need help from a little boy, but asked for it anyway. That’s how it was for as far back as I can remember. We always started early, because Mom wanted to eat in the early afternoon.

I would head to the kitchen, and climb up on one of the stools at the counter. All the kids were up – ready to help. My job? Open the loaves of bread and start breaking it into small pieces, and putting in a large mixing bowl.

“Like the priests do at Church.”

I was making stuffing. That was my contribution to our traditional Thanksgiving Feast.  Every year I broke bread with the other kids, until we graduated into doing other things.

Eventually I was chopping onions and celery, and by time teenagehood rolled around, I knew my way around preparing a turkey, stuffing and gravy. It was just how we always did Thanksgiving. It was fun, we were together , and it was tradition.

Fast forward a few years…

Early in our marriage, I made it very clear to my EC that I was in charge of the turkey. It is my deal. (That includes the gravy and the stuffing.) She didn;t fight me too hard on the issue. It is still my turf, and everyone knows it.  I gladly relinquish any claims on yams, mashed potatoes, rolls, fruit salad, pies, etc. I don’t bake.

You probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that my Dad also commanded the turkey preparation. Like father, like son. Rest assured in knowing that I will be waking my boys up to help prepare Thanksgiving dinner. Like father, like son.

One of the stranger “Dad” traditions in our family is cooking, and consuming the neck, heart and gizzard. Delish! My sons go through different phases of willingness to assist in this culinary endeavor – nevertheless, it happens every year. (The liver gets tossed.)

Since those days of childhood, Thanksgiving has become a bittersweet time for me. My parents, and my EC’s parents have all passed on. We miss them. We have become the “next” generation. The kids come home to our house now. At least for now…

I remember the last Thanksgiving dinner I had with my Mom – more than a decade ago. My EC and I had our own family, our own house, and were in the midst of establishing our own traditions. And with that, comes a certain degree of consternation.

There is a dance between generations that happens as the children grow up and become independent adults. The dance itself is not difficult, but sometimes it is hard to know who leads. We were ready, willing and able to host Thanksgiving in our new home, but my parents were determined to hang onto that tradition as long as they possibly could.

So it was with a mild reluctance on my part that we took the kids to my parents home for Thanksgiving dinner. (I’m sure the food was delicious, even though I didn’t help make the stuffing.) It is easy to assume that we ate ourselves sick, enjoyed each other’s company, and enjoyed watching the FOMLs and the grandparents love each other. It was good.

What I did not know at the time, is that the very next day – the day we all call “Black Friday” – my Mom would suffer a blood clot (while Christmas shopping) and be gone within the week.

And I didn’t want to go to her house for Thanksgiving dinner.

Even caught up in a season of gratitude, sometimes we don’t even appreciate what is right there in front of us. Sometimes we can only see it in retrospect. Fortunately, regret is assuaged by faith, and remorse is healed by forgiveness and faith. Knowledge of God’s Plan brings peace. The future brings a hope that we will be reunited to celebrate something far grander than an annual Thanksgiving feast.

I hope we can still have stuffing.

On a happier note… One of the things I did manage to keep track of is my Mom’s old Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, with the old-school stuffing recipe I grew up with.

It is the most basic recipe you will ever see. I have played with it by adding apples and cinnamon, pomegranates and pine nuts, etc. But I always come back to the basic, traditional, recipe – with fresh sage none of that stuff out of a bottle.