Years ago, my mother cooked her last Thanksgiving turkey.  I did not send her my holiday letter that year because she was “in” it, in all her holiday glory.  I roasted her with the turkey that year. Her neighbors photocopied the published article and hustled to my mother’s house to share it with her.

Later in the week, the phone rang.  It was my mother.  I could hear her breathing.  “Well, don’t ask me to cook at Thanksgiving anymore.  I’ve cooked my last Turkey!”  The essay about the Thanksgiving dinner that year bounced like a bad check.

It started in October.  My mother offered to cook the Thanksgiving dinner that year for all seven of us in our unruly household. She knew I have a habit of drinking wine while cooking, and that I hated to cook.  We talked the turkey to death that year.  She called me when she bought it.  I congratulated her and agreed that turkeys are scarce in November.  I knew that we were working the meal up with as much hype as the Thanksgiving                  football games.

On one call I knew I said something nearly fatal:  “Let’s not fuss this year mom.  The turkey is not huge, so just throw it in the freezer for now.”  This statement was like sending off an air raid siren in my mother’s head. The turkey became epic in importance. It was a challenge for my mother to overcome the issue of aging and ability.

I called her every day and every day we talked turkey. She took the six pound turkey out to thaw in the refrigerator two weeks before the Thursday of Togetherness.  I whispered a low volume concern that such a small bird could take less time to thaw than the twenty plus pound monsters she roasted when my father’s whole family would show up at the door.

It was a whisper, that’s all.  “WHAT?, she screamed into the phone.  My refrigerator is cold I tell you…COLD. I pinched its thigh and it is frozen stiff!”  The visual on that kept me humbled.  I told my family not to eat turkey that year, fearing chicken fever and gastric distress horrors.  I called her days later and I could hear chopping and grinding going on in the background:  homemade stuffing.  This stuffing was made and in the fridge while school was still in session.

“I am not touching the stuffing.” my husband said.  His scars from gallbladder surgery were still pink.  I contemplated the holiday as I packed the car for our trip to grandma’s.  I always pack everything that we own, especially name tags.  My mother had a propensity to call us all by each others’ names, regardless of gender or age.

The turkey was well done before we all loaded into the car for a six hour trek to grandma’s. The kids’ were not amused after six attempts at singing “Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go.”  Our nerves frayed, the baby screaming, we arrived.  I sensed disaster.  My mother called everyone by whatever names came to mind, including some biblical. She opened the oven door for us all to look at the bird.  It was the size of a Cornish game hen.

“Did it shrink?” my husband asked.  I put my hand over his mouth, kissed my mother, and she gave me a look that indicated that saying nothing at all was best.

We sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, all seven of us, and we stared at the miniscule  fowl in the center of the table.  My mother no longer cared about the meal. She had skipped the wine and was drinking Manhattans.  My husband was allowed to carve this tiny turkey.  He said, “Well, here’s mine, what are the rest of you going to eat?”  My mother did not hear this.  My husband served my mother first, and then doled out the rest of the poultry in one ounce portions for the rest of us.

The stuffing from this monster filled a single serving salad bowl.  The lima beans had been forgotten in the microwave and had been cooked twice.  These were served looking like aliens’ ears.  My mother forgot the mashed potatoes, and I incinerated the rolls.

We mumbled our blessing of our annual thanks for the Lord’s bounty, and ate dinner in less than five minutes.  We cleaned up the table after dinner.  My mother did the dishes, and my husband took the turkey carcass down to the beach to lay it to rest.  He said a prayer and let the seagulls have what very little remained.  The seagulls were bigger than the turkey.

My mother appeared with a roll of aluminum foil and asked for the leftovers of that poor turkey.  She looked out the window and saw seagulls landing on the beach.  She asked, “What are they eating?  Where’s the turkey?”

As we watched the day’s football games our stomachs’ growled.  We ate at restaurants for the remainder of our visit.  My mother mumbled about seagulls and the turkey’s leftovers at each meal.  We laughed about the whole thing on the long way home, and, I made the error of using this holiday to illustrate the mayhem of the season in our annual Christmas letter.

It, of course, haunts me still. It was my mother’s last Thanksgiving turkey, and I have to admit, she stayed with the tradition longer than I have, as I quit cooking one two years later.  I now order mine prepared from anywhere but home.

(*)The Incredible Shrinking Turkey, THE DAY, New London, CT. 10/25/1999 Sharon Clemons Muncatchy