3 posts tagged “thanksgiving”

Good friends invited us to celebrate Thanksgiving with them. Our contribution, aside from our irrepressible charm, was limited to a few bottles of wine. It was my easiest Thanksgiving ever, and one of the best.

But that was yesterday. Today is another story.

Vermont's stick season (no leaves on the trees, no snow on the ground, just sticks everywhere) is in full swing. The clouds hover above the treetops, and the brightest color outside the window is the dull yellow of the dead grass.

It's stick season in my soul as well. No spark, no oomph, just existential dread clogging up my vitals. So oomphless am I, in fact, that after asking my husband's permission (I'll explain later) I decided to spend the day in my pajamas, in and around the bed.

Now spending the day in pajamas when I don't have a fever symbolizes a major abdication for me, second only to watching TV in the daytime. Spend a day in pajamas and before you know it, you've stopped washing your hair, then your teeth fall out (because you've also stopped brushing your teeth), then you stop going out (after all, you're in your pajamas) and instead you start keeping cats, lots of them, in the house and you stop changing the litter....

You can see why I had to ask my husband's permission before setting foot on that slippery slope. Since the man is utterly lacking in tragic imagination, he willingly gave me his blessing—heck, he even smiled. And later, when I asked, he took the dogs out into the field and threw balls for them to tire them out. I'm married to an enabler!

So here I sit, in bed, in my pajamas (hair and teeth brushed, however—noblesse oblige) trying to salvage the day in the only way I know: writing.

When it gets dark, I'll go downstairs and make a fire in the stove. Then, still in my pajamas, I'll walk through the attached garage to the attached chicken coop, say a few words to the chickens, and close them in for the night.

The time: the late 1950s

The place: Birmingham, Alabama

My mother, my father and I are driving home after Thanksgiving dinner with an American family.

“What a meal!” my mother says. “Do you suppose it was typical?”

“I don't know,” my father answers, “but I have just eaten a dinner composed entirely of desserts. First, there was that red gelatin with grapes, on a leaf of lettuce. Why do Americans put a dessert on lettuce, and serve it at the beginning?”

“I've also seen them put pears from a can on lettuce,” my mother says.

“Tonight they put, all in one plate, sweet potatoes with those things like cotton balls on top—another dessert—and green beans. I cannot eat green beans on the same plate with dessert!”

“But they also gave you turkey, and that wasn't dessert. The turkey was the size of a pig! Mrs. Hillman had cooked it all alone. These American women, I don't know how they do it, without a maid to help them. But they don't get upset about anything, and their hair is always combed. Did you see?” my mother says, growing animated, “At the end of the meal Mr. Hillman and the boy took all the dirty dishes to the kitchen.”

“It is a strange country,” my father nods. “For instance, those round red slices they served with the turkey...”

“Ay! For a moment it reminded me of membrillo, quince paste...”

“But membrillo is never that sweet! No, no, this was too sweet, and it was followed by the final dessert: a pie with nuts. Even the cold tea they gave us to drink had sugar. My tongue is stuck to my teeth. In Spain this would never have happened.” My parents fall silent for a moment.

“But these Americans are so kind,” my mother says. “They don't understand anything we say, I can see their eyes open wide whenever I start to speak. Still, they invite us. They like a lot of butter, though. Maybe they don't have enough olive oil. In the store they only sell it in little bottles, very expensive.”

“Today they put butter on everything—on the turkey, on the green beans, on the bread, in the crust of the pie. How can we digest all that butter without wine? We may be a little sick tonight.”

My mother is laughing now. “You should have seen your face when they offered you a glass of milk with the pie!”

“That is the first time I have been offered a glass of milk since I was in short pants.”

“But they have so much good will, these Americans. They tried so much to explain the tradition to us. I think they said it was about eating with the Indians.”

“Impossible,” says my father. “The Indians were all killed...”

The conversation continues as we drive through the darkened streets. In the back seat, I barely hear it. I have fallen in love with the boy who helped clear the dishes, and a whole new continent is opening up before me.

November 22, 2008

I knew it was coming. When I found her two days ago, hunched over and pecking listlessly at the wall, I knew her sickness was upon her again, her lower abdomen flabby and distended. When this happened for the first time in August, I feared that scourge of good layers—egg binding.  I soaked her in a warm bath, dried her off, and provided that chicken panacea: warmth and isolation. In just 24 hours she was looking perky and ready to rejoin the flock.

But this time it was different. The temperature has stayed well below freezing for about a week, so there was no way I could bathe her. Still, I put her in a cardboard box with the top open and a heat lamp suspended over it. But it didn't help. Yesterday, when I offered her water, she drank a couple of drops, just to please me. This morning, she didn't drink at all. When I went to close the coop doors for the night, I knew what I would find.

I turned off the heat lamp and carried the box into the feed room, so as not to upset the rest of the chickens.

Rest in peace, red hen. You were a good and faithful layer. We made your big brown eggs into omelettes, gave them to the food bank, fed them to the dogs. Your last, super-sized egg is in our fridge right now. Tomorrow we will take you into the woods, and in the night the red fox will come—but you will not mind this—and carry you to his den. His wife needs to build up her reserves, to last through the winter and make babies in the spring. You will be their Thanksgiving dinner.