The year my three children were six, five and four years old, we almost didn't have Thanksgiving. Traditionally, my parents always had the holiday at their house, complete with excessive amounts of food, jokes and gags that had been lurking in the rafters since I was a kid, and the chaos that only comes from too many cooks in one small kitchen. But that particular year my father was recovering from eye surgery, and my mother announced to everyone who usually came that Dad couldn't have all the noise and bother of extended family. Secretly, I wondered if she was simply seizing the opportunity to have a quiet day off from all that cooking. And for a brief moment, I considered taking Thanksgiving off, too, but that was before my mind shifted into high gear for an adult daughter which means that I began to plan a way to save Thanksgiving for all of us.
The need for dad to have quiet was real. Solution: cook the meal at our house, bring it over in time to quietly and efficiently serve it, and then carry the remains back home for clean-up. All mom and dad had to do was sit in their chairs and eat, and I figured they had to do that anyway.
The second need was for my children to grasp the reality of dad's need for quiet. Solution: I had already instituted whisper times for days when my migraine headaches made me feel like I was at a NASCAR race for six or seven straight hours. The little guys were really good about whispering even when they were playing together. We would have a whisper Thanksgiving at Grandma and Grandpa's that day.
The last, and for me the hardest need was to replace the hype and excitement of the holiday for my children in a way that wouldn't make my plan a sacrifice and thereby a punishment for them. Mothers have to think on their toes, make quick decisions, and then carry them out in ways that benefit a diverse group of people. I still think my plan was sheer genius. Solution: I would let my children kill our turkey that year.
On Thanksgiving morning, I got up before dawn to make pies and homemade bread. By the time the little guys got up, the sun was shining on the eight inches of snow in our yard. After breakfast, I sent the four and five year olds in to watch holiday cartoons on WGNTV. Sarah, the six year old, was pulled into the bathroom for a conference.
I explained to her that since she was so grown up (children of that age believe all kinds of lies from their parents) she would have to be in on my plan. This she relished and would have done almost anything I told her to do out of the sheer excitement of being considered an adult.
And so around nine that morning, I announced during a cartoon festival commercial break, that the three of them were now going to go outside in the backyard to kill a turkey for our Thanksgiving dinner.
There has to be a hunting instinct in every human, whether it's the hunt of a good bargain at Kohl's or hunting a spider or a mosquito or a mouse. We love the hunt, and my kids were almost delirious at the thought of killing anything.
"But we don't got no guns," my son, already a practical thinker, said.
But even he wasn't smarter than his mother. I pulled out of a Harvey's dimestore paper bag three shiny cowboy six shooters that shot deadly red caps which I demonstrated. They were impressed. Anything that made smoke could kill, they reasoned.
I laid out the plan. Sarah was in charge. Matt was her first lieutenant, and Rachel was the troops. Sarah would take them out into the backyard, where it was reported that turkeys lived, and they would sneak about until they spotted one. They could hardly contain themselves. This was high adventure. This was something they had never even dreamed could happen. They put on their little hooded snowsuits, grabbed their silver guns, and walked out into the wilderness behind our small house in the heart of town.
Sarah carried out her part like a champion. After letting Rachel and Matt stalk crows and sparrows for a while, she yelled, "Turkey!" a few random times giving all of them reason and opportunity to shoot their guns and smell the smoke from the exploded caps. Then, when they were starting to get really cold, she yelled, "Turkey" one last time. "You shot it, " she announced. As the smoke was clearing she told the little guys to go over by the back porch while she went to see if the turkey was still alive.
She pronounced it dead and also too bloody for them to see, and they obediently covered their eyes while she completed the deception. She had with her a paper grocery sack with a can of cranberry sauce in the bottom. After making a lot of noise about how gross the turkey carcass was, she held the bag closed in one hand and supported it with the other.
"Come feel how heavy it is," she told them just as she had been instructed. Each little hand had to feel the weight of the "dead turkey" can of cranberry sauce which made them feel pretty successful as hunters. The three of them marched into the kitchen, still brandishing their deadly weapons, and announced "We killed a turkey!"
Some homemade frosted cinnamon rolls and milk lured them out of the kitchen to the TV in the living room where they watched "A Huckleberry Hound Thanksgiving" while I gutted and plucked the can of cranberry sauce. In reality, I put a small turkey roast into the oven and began to work on the side dishes. Soon the aroma of turkey began to fill the house. It really felt like Thanksgiving. We had made homemade greeting cards for Grandma and Grandpa, woven construction paper placemats, and even decorated paper napkins.
Finally the turkey came out of the oven, small and rectangular in its aluminum pan, but definately smelling like turkey. Matt asked, "Is that it? Is that all there is?" Rachel said, "Yeah. All the rest of it was advertisements," a comment I made in disgust over the Sunday paper each week.
We must have seemed a little caravan that Thanksgiving as we walked to my parents' house eight blocks away. I knew the walk would heighten the excitement and would give them a sense of the journey they were taking. Each child carried what they were able to and I carried all the rest. We arrived at Grandma and Grandpa's house loaded with just enough turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, dressing, candied sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce (the can from the paper bag,) and pumpkin pie to make one simple but satisfying meal for six hungry people. Over dinner, in their soft, little whisper voices, they proudly told Grandma and Grandpa how they had killed the turkey we were all eating. Later, as we walked home in the near darkness of late afternoon, the turkey hunt was all they talked about.
My dad fully recovered from his eye surgery, but thank heaven, none of us ever recovered from the delight and wonder of that Thanksgiving when three small children, armed with deadly dimestore cap pistols, killed the game that fed their entire family.
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