Thanksgiving is a very special day, symbolizing the hopes and dreams of the very first settlers on our soil. It's an interesting day really.  It's all-American.  These days I don't know if we are giving thanks or just celebrating our right to excess.  In any case, it's worth it if only for the pumpkin pie.

Every family has its own tradition and my personal Thanksgiving tradition has always been to find someone who was cooking dinner and wanted guests, someone who would feed me and feed me well. That's what holidays are all about, tradition.  For years the family gathered at my mother's house and she cooked, and cooked, and cooked.  She was great at tradition.  We ate, and ate, and ate. We were pretty good at tradition too.

The first year I broke tradition was the first Thanksgiving my mother was feeling ill.  It was a long time from when she started to slow down and fail to when we forced her to the doctor and got the sobering news that she had cancer.  That year, she just wasn't herself, not as strong and not as capable.  She didn't want to cook and she didn't want to make the trip to my sister's house for dinner.  That year, my children and I were the only Thanksgiving guests and I did the unthinkable but entirely logical.  I ordered the meal from a local supermarket and on Thanksgiving morning picked up a bird roasted to perfection with all the side dishes and dessert already prepared.  It was a good meal and very little trouble.  I briefly thought about making this a new tradition.

The next year it was clear that if my mother lived to Thanksgiving, it would surely be the last November she was with us.  Suddenly my traditions seemed unimportant and I had domestic urges.  I felt an overwhelming desire to learn to bake beans as she had, and I needed to learn to roast a turkey.  It was time for me to grow up, to take responsibility; and for the first time in my life, it was my own idea and not just forced by circumstances.  That year I bought for the very first time, my very own raised-to-be-eaten, fattened and plucked-naked turkey; the symbol of what America means to me.

I started two weeks before Thanksgiving to give myself a test run.  I was immediately thwarted at my first attempt because the roasting pan I had purchased was too large to fit in my apartment-sized oven.  When I moved in I had the choice of a large stove or room for a washer and dryer. Having spent far too many years at the laundromat, I opted for the washer and dryer. As we are a small family, I decided we needed only small meals. There is no such thing as small amounts of dirty laundry if there are children in the house.

Not to be daunted, I found a new pan, one that fit in the oven and still allowed the door to close completely.  I did everything that I could discover one was supposed to do.  I read about turkeys on the internet, I googled.  I asked friends.  I discovered that every single person on earth cooks the turkey a different way.

One wraps it in bacon so that the skin gets crisp but does not burn, another uses a special rack, some go for frozen turkeys, others for fresh, some cook it on the grill, some others deep-fry.  I didn't even get as far as stuffing the thing.  I didn't make the usual mistake that most new cooks do and leave the insides of the turkey inside the turkey.  I violated him like a professional, removing the entrails through the proper orifice and marvelling at how efficient these fowl are to keep all their organs in a nice plastic bag like that.  Not nearly as messy and probably reduces the risk of infection.  

To my surprise, I didn't completely ruin that turkey.  I opted for a cooking bag that promised I could not fail and amazingly, I didn't fail. I had one nicely roasted turkey under my belt and I was eager now for the main event.  I bought another turkey, another set of cooking bags, stocked all the usual vegetables and stuffing and chilled the cranberry sauce. Thanksgiving morning came, and I was ready for it.

There was something odd about this bird.  I prepared it exactly as I had done before,  I cooked it the requisite number of hours, the little pop-up timer had popped and all signs pointed to it being ready for consumption.  But when I went to carve it, the meat was pink.  I put it back in the oven and waited a bit longer.  When I removed it the second time, it was pinker, in fact it grew more and more pink-stained as cooking time went on.  The strange thing was, the meat was white and well done near the bone, but grew from faint to shocking pink near the skin.  I didn't know what was wrong with this glowing pink turkey.  I cut off some meat and put it in the microwave.  It got tough and rubbery, but it was still a faint magenta. I started wondering just where this "farm" was that was the supposed origin of this turkey.  I suspected it may be near a nuclear power plant.

I tried to find white and cooked meat to serve, it was a strange bit of carving.  I filled a plate with any meat I could scrape off that didn't look as though it came from a turkey with radiation sickness. Ultimately, I didn't have the guts to feed it to anyone and I wrapped that turkey carcasse in three plastic bags and tossed it out. I would have lined the trash can in lead if I could have.  We had a vegetarian Thanksgiving.  We gave thanks that the turkey didn't seem to be emitting subspace signals and there was no increase in UFO activity over my house.

I was feeling defeated so two days later I bought another turkey and we had Thanksgiving all over again.  This bird turned out fine.  I was told later by someone who works as a cook, that the pink meat was a sign it had been frozen, thawed and then frozen again.  I was thankful once more that we didn't attempt to eat it.

This year I fell back on tradition and sought out someone else to cook the dinner.  We gave thanks that my sister made the meal and required no outside assistance or anyone to bring dessert (I haven't had an urge to make pastry crust yet).  I have returned to the tradition of finding someone else to do all the work.  Tradition is so important.