"It's a turkey, Gertrude!"

 

 

I don't know how it happened, but Thanksgiving is next week. 

Next. Week. 

It totally snuck up on me, what with trying to keep all of my assorted balls in the air.  You know the ones:  keeping the kids alive, employers happy, animals fed, and bills paid.  Add in a hurricane and a presidential election and it's no wonder I'm a more disorganized mess than usual.

As I attempt to pull a holiday dinner together this year, I can't help but think how our Thanksgivings have changed over the years.  One of my favorite memories is of the time when my soon-to-be-husband Dan and I traveled to Ohio to spend Thanksgiving with my maternal grandmother.

After we arrived, we learned that Grandma had not yet gotten a turkey.  Ignoring the obvious question of why didn’t she have a turkey already if she was having guests for Thanksgiving dinner, Dan and I offered to go to the store and buy one. 

Looking for a turkey on Thanksgiving Day was a much bigger challenge than we expected, especially considering that we needed a fresh, unfrozen one.  A frozen turkey would never thaw in time to cook.  Dan waited in the car while I went into the grocery store.  I made a bee-line to the back of the store toward the meat department.  To my horror, there was not a single fresh turkey to be found.  Not one. 

Should I get a chicken?  A roast?  As I considered the options, my eyes were drawn to a freezer bin near the meat case.  Inside it were smallish turkey-looking items.  I picked one up.  The size was perfect since there were only going to be the three of us for dinner.  As I checked the package for the little pop-out timer thingy (a necessity for a young cook), I discovered that my perfect turkey was really a capon.  A capon?  What on earth is a capon?  Oh well, it looked like a turkey and it wasn’t frozen.  It would have to do. 

I wanted to impress my grandmother with how well I could cook a turkey, so I immediately began preparing the bird once we got back to her apartment.  There was no need to tell her about the capon.  After all, it looked just like a turkey.  Who would even know the difference?  I cut open the wrapper, cleaned the inside of the bird, and seasoned it so that it was ready for my grandmother’s oven.  I was proud of myself that I knew how to prepare a turkey.  Surely Grandma would be impressed as well.  I couldn’t wait for her to take the first bite.

My grandmother made several side dishes to accompany the “turkey”.  I helped her finish the rest of the preparations while Dan set the table.  Just as we were about to sit down to eat, there was a knock on the door.  It was my Aunt Mary.  Aunt Mary was known for showing up unannounced whenever a meal was likely to be happening.  She was a tough, independent woman; the bold, feisty yin to my grandmother’s quiet, passive yang.  Aunt Mary believed that she knew everything about everything and no one dared to tell her otherwise.

The  four of us sat down at the table and took turns selecting our food.  After taking the first bite of her “turkey”, my grandmother paused and said, “Hmmm.”

Uh-oh.  Is that a good “hmmm” or a bad “hmmm”?  Did I do something wrong in cooking it?  Did she bite into the giblets bag? 

“What’s wrong, Grandma?”  I asked.

Grandma took another bite.  “This tastes like a capon.”

How could she possibly know that it tasted like a capon?  I took a bite.  I couldn’t tell any difference except that the meat was less dry than a turkey. 

Before Dan or I could say anything, though, Aunt Mary jumped to our defense.  “It’s not a capon, Gertrude.  It’s a turkey.”

Grandma took another bite and chewed it slowly.  “I don’t know.  It sure tastes like a capon to me.”

Dan and I looked at each other.  If we come clean with the fact that it is, indeed, a capon, we’ll embarrass Aunt Mary. 

Aunt Mary took a bite.  “This is a turkey, not a capon.”  She looked at me and rolled her eyes as if to say "your grandmother is losing it." 

Grandma wasn’t about to let it go.  After another bite, she was certain.  “Yes.  This is definitely a capon.  This does not taste like turkey at all.”

Aunt Mary, unable to contain herself any longer, slammed down her fork and shrieked:  “For crying out loud, Gertrude, it’s a turkey! What do you think, they’d buy a damn capon for Thanksgiving dinner?” 

Right.  Who would buy a capon for Thanksgiving dinner?

Thankfully, the identification of the bird wasn’t mentioned for the rest of the meal.  We talked and laughed and shared an otherwise uneventful Thanksgiving with my grandmother and Aunt Mary.   

The next day, as Dan and I were preparing to leave, Grandma thanked us for coming for Thanksgiving and for helping her cook the meal.  I could tell that something was bothering her though..

 “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head.  “I still swear that bird was a capon.” 

 

 

 

photo by Lisa Kern

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All was fine until the polynomials showed up

“Mom, I need your help with my homework tonight,” Evan announced as I picked him up from school.

Then, the words no parent wants to hear: “It’s algebra.”

Algebra. Not much scares me these days (except wolf spiders, poison ivy, and an ineffective Congress,) but algebra still paralyzes me with fear. At my age, I’ve forgotten much more math than I remember. In fact, I think algebraic concepts were among the very first things in my brain to shrivel up and die during childbirth.

Twenty-plus years and three children later, my memory of algebra hasn’t returned and I can honestly say I haven’t missed it. The way I see it, you’re inviting trouble when you allow letters and numbers to fraternize with one another anyway.

After dinner, Evan began to work on his math homework. It wasn’t long before he ran into problems (I know, I know…bad pun.)

I looked at his homework but it might as well have been written in Chinese. It made just as little sense to me.

I stared at the problems, incredulous that I’d ever been capable of figuring them out at any point in my life. No matter how long I stared at them, though, I could not remember what to do with them. Which do I solve first: the addition and subtraction or the multiplication? What about the x’s and y’s? What am I supposed to do with those? And what’s the deal with those tiny numbers that like to hang out above and to the side of other numbers? Those things are just plain annoying.

Why can’t math be more like language arts? If you can’t remember a grammar rule or how to spell a word, you can at least look it up in a stylebook or a dictionary. There’s no reference book for math problems.

I consider myself to be an intelligent person, but not being able to figure out my son’s seventh grade homework makes me feel uneducated and, worse, incredibly old. What would I forget next – how to tie my shoes or eat with a fork?

Even though I did not want to allow myself to be beaten by my son’s algebra homework, I hadn’t been able to successfully solve a single equation. Still, this wasn't my homework so why should I have to continue to struggle with it? I’d already passed seventh grade!

I decided to give up and tell Evan that I can’t help him with his homework. One of the perks of maturity is that we no longer have to be so concerned with how competent we appear to someone else. We’re more relaxed with ourselves and therefore less likely to feel insecure by admitting our shortcomings.

Or something like that.

While it’s probable that I care less about my shortcomings and more about not spending the rest of my night with an algebra book, I felt proud that I was able to drop the Supermom façade and admit that Evan’s homework was beyond me.

I couldn't abandon Evan, though. Solving algebra successfully would require the big guns, a secret weapon, and an ace-in-the-hole.

I asked his older brother to help him.

Who says I’m too old to figure this stuff out?