This is my favorite part of the day- just at the new moment of it. It’s the perfect time to get square with Our Maker and paint a brand new picture of ourself doing the right thing.
On this particular dawn, I’ve sat down with a cup of hot spiced tea and taken to imagining my son’s face when I unveil the turkey I put together just for him. I’m planning to invite him to share it with the rest of us, but I put two birds in the oven this year just in case.
You see, some life back, along about the time he had his first crush on a pretty little girl named Gen, and we were still enjoying close community with our neighbors and moving through our days at the pace of typical suburban life, a few things had me feeling rather despondent. (Honestly, God gives a mother everything she needs to get through a day, but sometimes she isn’t seeing as well as she should.)
When Thanksgiving rolled around that year, my favorite son had a brilliant idea (well he was my favorite every time we were alone together, as is every child). Jack had always had a keen sense of taste and smell, as well as a bright mind for snuggling up and imagining exotic family vacations we’d take, if we ever found ourselves in possession of a fancy bottle we might rub and get our wish.
Lately, he had been daydreaming about fixing up a cologne, special for a person’s favorite girl. It would smell just like bacon frying on the camp stove when you first open your eyes and take a swipe at them; when you roll over on your cot and you peek out through the tent screen, and there’s nothing to see but God’s creation of the morning rising up over polished water you know you’re going to be cutting a wake through later, and you get a soul-satisfying whiff.
I could tell my other three sons, my son-in love, and my future son-in-love, had seen their estimation of this youngest boy on the brink of joining their ranks, grow by leaps and bounds as he told of this unique blend of scent that every man could cover his favorite pretty girl in whenever he took a notion to spend much time with her. A man could just splash it around her neck real good, and everything he ever longed for would be cuddled up next to him. To tell you the truth, my ears hadn’t pricked to such strange wisdom since my eldest son had announced his plan to marry his four-year-old crush and carry her off to Mississippi, where they’d live happily ever after in a little two room cabin with a dirt floor. (Such mental trickery wasn’t really all that surprising since we’d been on a regular fare of “Little House in The Big Woods” in the evenings.)
Anyway, that year as we prepared to express our tremendous gratitude for this great nation in which we are encouraged to worship GOD and love each other the way we see fit, Jack wove a spell-binding tale of a potential centerpiece for the Thanksgiving table that would enter the waking fantasies of every man to live into the double digits, till kingdom come! The giant poultry that we’ve been told Benjamin Franklin nominated to represent this great nation, would be carefully chosen, then stuffed full of every kind of tasty, expertly seasoned, and for the finale; deliberately special-wrapped in, you guessed it- the best any pig has to give- beautifully marbled, perfectly cured, thick-cut bacon. You should have seen their manly eyes light up when he described it to the remainder of the pack.
Of course, I’ve never been one to shudder at a novel idea. In fact, I kind of like to take a calculated risk once in a while. I find it keeps life perky. So, with measured enthusiasm I proceeded with Jack’s magnificent plan. I shopped with care for the lucky winner- she had to be pleasingly plump but not obese, with pretty curves in the appropriate places. I hit the Jack-pot at our local Kroger.
On the big day, I rose early before the initial pink began to make a swath through the sky. I cleared the counter and washed it down. That turkey weighed twice legendary babies who are told of for decades by the doctors who delivered them and the mamas who near-died getting them here; but I wrestled with it until I had it as securely wrapped as those respectable specimens were upon leaving the delivery room. I sprinkled and sprayed and tossed and prayed over it, before placing it in the oven to slow-roast until it became the most perfect example of a juicy gobbler we’d ever put in our mouths.
Later, following the ceremonial placement of the fantastic bird on the center of our extra large, well-loved, beautifully laid gathering table; and the half-hour devouring of weeks of labor- The Turkey was pronounced the finest fowl ever to have been seen or heard from this side of Paradise. In fact, one man jumped to his feet after only one bite and swore he wished his mother had named him Jack! And now, Loved Ones, you know how that Thanksgiving became the only one to beat.
P.S. I do love you, Jaxon Edward McGarrh Shelton, and in some of my most special memories, you truly are my favorite.
Copyright 2023. L.L. Shelton.
