The Ones We Miss At Our Table: Of Love, Grief, and Turkeys
my grief is not loud it will not perform or ask for things it freezes over perfectly jagged ice crystals clinging to the inside of four chambers still full of pumping blood my grief is not a spectator sport it does not need condolences or sympathies to drive it forward for it to hit home nor is my grief an invitation to be inserted upon to grandstand how much one cares it does not want gestures of solidarity steeped in a desire to be seen from those who will never touch the depths of its rage or the limits of its despair all it wants now is to own the space it has found itself in just resolutely clinging to the inside of four chambers still full of pumping blood if you were looking for an opening you will not find one here my grief is the kind that patches itself together seals itself shut it is terrifyingly self sufficient a torturous resilience the kind that allow for no room and will provide no applause give no validation it will tell you quietly politely move along it will tell you quietly politely the first time around as it sits unyielding inside four chambers still full of pumping blood
This year, we raised turkeys—and, in the space of what felt like an infinite moment, our we became painfully smaller. I just finished sharpening my knives earlier this morning, for the inevitable conclusion of my turkey raising adventure, and almost like a compulsion or an intrusive thought slinking in the corners of my consciousness, I see two tables side by side: the one I thought we were going to have, and the one I know we will now have. The image sits in my throat (and not my brain, like where I thought it should reside—but no, evidently this bizarre phenomena occurs closer to my chest, where a heart pumps incredulously at its own existence), sticky and unfamiliar, and I take a deep breath and allow the feeling to blossom so that it may pass through unencumbered. I know if I press down on it, suffocate it in hopes that it doesn’t burn so sharply, or try to only allow it to trickle through, it will end up coagulating on its way, out of control, and become a wounded monster I won’t be able to keep at bay.
I used to write a lot more, when my heart couldn’t quite hold so many words and they would spill, overflowing my cup, like mentos in soda—but as I grew and my capacity for tolerating pain increased, my words on paper (or in this case, the screen) got less and less. I don’t generally like to advertise my heart—it’s a little battered and shy, a little misshaped, it’s not the shiniest or biggest, so I tend to tuck it away where it doesn’t interfere too much with my daily activities (I was once described as “terrifyingly efficient.”) However, every time I embark on a journey in homesteading, in being a bit more self sufficient, in learning something new, to be a more conscious consumer and living being, I always blog about it on my website, and this time, my heart hitched a ride. This time around is a little different, in that the process of raising, butchering, and consuming turkey was, is, and has been intricately intertwined with lessons in love and grief.
First things first: I don’t even like turkey. I don’t know whose bright idea it was to take a giant, voracious but slow growing, yet obnoxiously bland and dry bird, and commercialize it for the sole purpose of a holiday meant for gathering with friends and family (I would never want to serve anything but the best, if it were up to me, and turkeys in my opinion, are really, really poor fare.) But they did, and now it has become the norm, and we attached our emotions to it because that’s what humans do. Adam grew up with it as tradition and feels incomplete in a turkey-less year, and Hagihara-sensei (also for some inexplicable reason) was obsessed with it—I’m told that one year he essentially ate nothing but turkey.
I rolled my eyes and made a face when the topic of eating turkeys at Thanksgiving this year popped up, but seeing how two of the men in my life who I do care for (sometimes begrudgingly—how silly it is right now to think of the times I was irritated or tired) would have been disheartened to not experience carving the bird for this holiday, I came to a compromise and said we’ll raise them. This way I can control how big they get, what they eat, and what they’re finished on—all the variables that affect their texture and flavor. Both of them were… adorably apprehensive at my proclamation. After all, sensei never hunted, and Adam hadn’t helped me process anything bigger than a quail before, and he has big feelings about it.
If I back up a moment, we had become caretakers for our quiet, unassuming sensei (a Japanese term someone else gives to honor a teacher or mentor), the head instructor of the dojo that Adam and I run and he taught at, a man who is quiet in history but was the giant upon which so many stood upon the shoulders of, which is why I heavily considered his desire for the holiday. If it was just my husband, I could have probably gotten out of it, but I was outnumbered this year. I learned a lot about taking care of people from my parents, who had a never ending stream of visitors to their home, some for a short while, others who stayed longer during times of tumult or emergencies in their lives. It’s a practice I continued when I emerged as an adult, to become a safe space for friends and family to rest at. We operate the dojo with the same goal in mind—we have taken in uchi deshi (the Japanese term for live-in students) if they have a need for housing, in exchange for some help around the dojo. My parents have always modeled the idea that if we have the capabilities (and there is no better goal for us than to become someone with those capabilities) to provide support for those we love, to do so because that is love, and that is a lesson that is carved and scarred across my heart.
I call them scars because that responsibility is scary. Trauma is scary. Emergencies are scary. Health is scary. I am, was, are, will be scared, probably for the rest of my years—at the fragility of life, and the strength of grief. And I am no stranger to it, having been there for my grandparents in their twilight years, having called ambulances, made funeral arrangements, having stepped in when my language teacher collapsed from a stroke (she made a miraculous recovery—apparently I caught it just as it occurred, and having surgery within 30 minutes prevented any major damage), when my elderly relatives have fallen and broken bones, or making difficult calls for procedures while they’re hooked up to more tubes than I was aware a human could be connected to, or when their lungs filled with so much fluid that I have to beg the nurses to give just a little morphine to take the edge off of the oxygen starvation, operating on so very little sleep because while the intermittent alarms are disruptive and annoying, the silence would have been even more deafening—I am no stranger to the responsibility and the work that comes with care, that comes with love. And I am still afraid.
(I am afraid because if you love, it will hurt.)
And ultimately, it did hurt. It hurt when he died (there is no other word that so succinctly defines the expiration of life) and we were woken disoriented from our restless sleep (“I’m so sorry.” the doctor’s voice seemed to waver on the other line, and I resisted the urge to comfort her because, ironically, it seemed like she was grappling with finding the right words to comfort me), when—in the early hours while the morning sun peeked through the hospital curtains—we gently wiped his still face, his cooling hands as one last act of love, and made arrangements for his cremation (I had no idea arms could memorize the weight of ashes but they do), it hurt in his absence during what used to be his class times and his gi and hakama (his uniform) sit untouched, it hurt in the unexpected moment of seeing his name that he secretly etched onto the door to the changing room Adam built for him (like, do we ever cover over that considering the door needs repainting, and badly?) It hurt when we planned to close out his cell phone that was on our service, and it hurt when the car that I never expected to come back into my possession again did, it hurt when we packed away his well worn shoes and clothes for the last time.
It hurt because we didn’t realize how embedded he was in our lives, yet how little we knew about him (which is coocoo for cocoa puffs, considering the relationship we had), until we had to deal with those remnants. It hurt when we had to let go of our dreams for the future, to know that we could no longer pay him back for the lessons he gave us, and the would’ves, could’ves, and should’ves twisted (still twists) like knives in our souls. It hurt to know that he will not be sitting at our table, enjoying a turkey he once stared at with almost childlike wonder when we first got them in, and then watched grow up through the screen of my phone while he was recovering (or so we all assumed) in the hospital.
(I trace the hurt, like a maze, like breadcrumbs, a yellow bricked road, back to being angry at myself, just how much I didn’t know, and just how much I will never know. If I know, I can find a solution, I can be Mrs. Fix It—I am always Mrs. Fix it, but how can I fix things I wasn’t even aware of until it’s too late?)
It’s one thing, when you have had decades to bond with and express your love to family, that has always hurt less for me because there are less regrets to be had—my family is close despite being physically far and rarely does a week go by where we’re not calling or texting on interesting things we find or things that remind us of each other, boisterous and loud and filled with humor and support. It’s another when you don’t know whether or not your love for someone is burdensome to them, if you’re invading their peace and they’re just too kind to say anything, and that care is a careful balance between allowing autonomy and keeping someone safe—that even if you have a right to do something, it may not always be the right thing to do. In the latter, I am filled with all the words that I did not get to say, actions that I am unsure whether or not was understood, all the moments I feel like I wasted by not making the most of them. Part of it was because he was always quiet, and for as long as I had known him, rarely voiced an opinion (although he did once mention in a passing that his quietness, his silence, is an act of love in itself) and if one always seems alright with everything, then how can we be so sure that everything’s alright?
(Not knowing whether your love reaches someone is a very painful thing indeed.)
I used and continue to use the word “caretaker” to describe my role, to doctors and nurses—for me, the word family is reserved for the ones that he kept in his heart, and while he thought of the dojo as part of his family, his eyes lit up in ways I have never seen when his wife and children visited and stayed by his side. It was important to me that I kept within the boundaries of caretaking, because I have seen the pain of what it’s like when others remove the autonomy of having an independent relationship with someone we care for—that the responsibility of a caretaker meant we put our own feelings to the side, and become the helpers so that his loved ones could use the time they had together to just spend with him without being burdened with the work or intruded upon by us. If anyone was worried that I resented the difference—don’t. It was an immeasurable honor and a gift to have been able to take on that role. That he trusted us enough (and I think that should be enough) to know we’d take on this responsibility so that he and his loved ones wouldn’t need to worry (or so I hope) about anything else.
So this year’s turkeys isn’t just about the turkeys: it was and is about hope, and recognizing the limited amount of time we have to resolve regrets, and to make peace with that which has transpired. Time, they say, doesn’t flow backwards so we have to be acutely aware of every decision we make. It is about lessons we learned in what love, and the different iterations it can take, and the different ways we can express it, really meant.
And now, about the turkeys if anyone was curious about how someone can raise it in just their backyard: the breed I chose was blue slate heritage turkeys from a little farmette out east. I follow the farmer on Instagram, which is why I knew she had them available. We started out with three poults (the term for baby turkeys), and they’re really quite cute when they’re little and the snoods (that signature fleshy growth on their faces) are small, but one disappeared from the fully enclosed pen (that good friends pitched in to help build), never to have been found again (we are still puzzled by the fact that only a single one was taken). They are fed high protein game bird starter for the first few weeks, then medium protein flock raiser, and finally finished on a mix of feed, scratch grains (which include corn, sunflower seeds, wheat, barley, millet), and dandelion and alfalfa greens (that I grow myself). For the last week, I also mixed in leftover half-drunk alcohol that’s probably vinegar by now (some from sensei and oh there goes another pang in my chest) in the cabinets to make more space and maybe improve flavor (if you were wondering whether or not whiskey makes turkeys drunk, it only stopped them from panicking and instead gathered the liquid courage to aggress Adam—who aggressed them back—and was otherwise uninteresting.) This is opposed to commercial, non-heritage turkeys which are finished on just corn, in hopes that it will produce a juicier and more flavorful bird. They need fresh water daily, in a bucket, unlike chickens that can drink from a poultry nipple waterer—lugging a bucketful of fresh water every day while they throw themselves against the pen in abject terror is also a lesson in patience and keeping calm despite the chaos around us.
Also unlike commercial broad breasted birds, these don’t grow at the same speed, and they also don’t get as large. Instead of topping out at 45lbs for Toms (a male turkey), they can top out in the 20’s (less for hens). They also don’t suffer from the same health issues the fast and large growing birds run into, such as keeling over from heart and organ failure, or limbs breaking from their sheer body weight. Instead of the tell table gobbling, the heritage turkeys bark instead—piercing ARF ARF ARF when we pass by. However, they eat a lot in comparison to chickens, and grow at a snails pace compared to quail. I keep/kept telling myself that they have to taste better to have made the work in keeping them worth it. Mine were processed today at about 20 weeks, rather than 26 so they’re on the smaller side, dressed out at 7lbs each–they were tall, had reached about chest height to me, and I was a little concerned my fridge wouldn’t be able to hold both while the meat is brining and resting. They will be dry brined with salt and sugar (this process has been shown to help the meat retain more moisture, on top of flavoring it) as they rest in the fridge to pass rigor. In case you were wondering why this soon, it’s because my sister is only going to be back to the states for a few days this coming week before heading off to Costa Rica again, and if I could not have them the way they were originally intended, I wanted to enjoy this symbol of togetherness with her and my mom (sadly, my dad is holding down the fort in CR already, so we’ll have to settle for Facetime.)
People say turkeys are friendly, even a poultry vet friend who works with commercial operations has, in all her years, rarely seen an unfriendly bird, which is why it was an unfortunate surprise when mine only had two (later to become three) modes of living: panic, 404, and square up. If you’ve never worked in the garden and got bitten by a turkey that quietly snuck up on you, only for it to take off running and screaming once it completed its crime, you probably don’t know the struggle between knowing that allowing them to eat wild greens in the garden will make them taste better, and the paranoia that there’s always a turkey lurking and waiting to strike. It’s a delicate balance.
Normally if you process poultry, defeathering them involves scalding, but unfortunately I don’t have a pot big enough for this, so we dry plucked them. It’s a lot more work, but we’ll make due with what we have. I can say for certain that my back definitely did not like that, especially because there were a lot of pinfeathers I had to pluck out with tweezers.
I operate on the “one bad day” concept when it comes to raising meat for consumption, and that ultimately we (everyone and everything that has lived) will all have that “one bad day”, so there’s a feeling of being acutely aware that making sure it is done quickly to prevent more suffering than necessary, and that we don’t waste any part of the bird (I will be washing and storing the organs for giblet gravy), both being part of the lessons we learn in this process. Adam says sorry and small prayer, and I thank them for providing our family food. The steps are not different than any of the other poultry I’ve done, just bigger, but it did feel infinitely heavier because they’re remnants of the before, and their end feels like severing a line into the after.
This time Adam helped me do the first round of plucking, and we sat in the chilly afternoon breeze (perfect temperature for working with a carcass, not so great for our frozen fingers), having, perhaps for the first time in months, a normal conversation that did not feel really normal at all (how exactly does one just chit chat when it feels like the sky fell down? But we did, and he joked that his dad would have liked me because I’m “a man’s man” elbow deep in turkey feathers.) I can’t really say what my other half feels moment to moment, since as hard as this is for me, it must be unconscionably harder for him and I try my best to give us both a bit of grace. I try not to insert myself in the grief of others, until they invite me in—it always feels awkwardly self serving and narcissistic, forcing them to show gratitude they might not even be capable of feeling, socially engaging with me with energy when they don’t even have the strength to muster as they are trying to pick up the pieces of themselves off the floor. But, what do I do when I am mourning too? My counselor (if you haven’t taken advantage of your school’s—if you’re in one—mental health services, it’s worth it, and free and SUNY Maritime’s is two thumbs up) says it (Love? Grief) should get easier, eventually, but no worries if it doesn’t seem possible at the moment. I have a slightly different take in that, like turkeys and the other lives I take to feed my family (directly or indirectly), it doesn’t get easier in the sense that we don’t feel as much, nor should it, but that we just get better at it, and that is what ultimately provides comfort.
(I often joke that my counselor is going to need a counselor after dealing with me, because they get to see me as the maniac I am. As intense as I can be when social boundaries are in place that I’m very careful to tiptoe around, imagine the kind of mouth I got on me when those norms are broken. Sometimes, as I have learned: silence really is love, and very often in my case, compassion.)
This year, our table is missing a friend, but we will be offering a plate to him and his space on the kamiza (the altar at the front of the dojo), food that we grew with our sincerity, that had him in mind. The dojo is following the traditional 49 days of mourning which is common in Asia, in which we offer incense and snacks and fold paper money and goods to be burned every seven days for seven weeks. We write letters filled with the words we would say as if our loved one has simply gone on a journey (they have) and watch as the smoke rises and the ashes glow, and we learn a little bit about ourselves and our hearts each time we do so. I watch as the dojo, a family of types and sorts in itself, come together in its grief (his relationship with everyone was unique and different) by giving more kindness and more love, that to make choices with love is really the most any of us can do, and I am proud to know the people who practice here. I watch as my children (my sweet, considerate, and ever-resilient children) clumsily place the Halloween candy they dragged me all over the neighborhood for on the plate next to the incense, lay belly down on the mats and write their own letters, wishing sensei safe travels, covered in spelling and grammatical mistakes, and ask if they can fold more airplanes for him (I don’t know where he’ll be storing all those planes in the afterlife, or the dozens of cats my littlest one insists on drawing “to keep him company” but perhaps I’ll fold a garage or two for him) and I know, even if I am unable to find it now, that peace is on the horizon.
(But I must confess I don’t know if turkeys will be again.)
To be continued for the taste verdict.
Part 2: Taste Verdict
This update is belated as I hadn’t found the time to sit down and write. Thanksgiving came and went, and ultimately while the turkey was the best tasting one I’ve here had, it has a distinct Turkey flavor that just doesn’t rank high on my list of poultry I would enjoy eating. I did, however, get to spend the holiday with my sister, and we cooked up a feast (as you can see from my Instagram link embed.)
After brining the turkey and allowing it to pass rigor, we spatchcocked it (which helps it cook more evenly without drying out) by cutting out the spine and flattening it. Then we used a garlic herb olive oil rub, and roasted it for about an hour and a half at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. For sides, I made a mashed potato, a sweet potato casserole, a made-from-scratch stuffing (which was the most popular dish of the day), and honey roasted brussels sprouts and parsnips.
Ultimately I don’t think we’ll do turkey again. It took too long (and too much) to raise them to weight, and tenderness and juiciness aside, it just wasn’t worth it. I have thoughts to do Bresse chickens, which are considered the wagyu of poultry due to their marbling for this year.
I don’t regret having gone through this experience (in all the meanings that one phrase could hold) because I learned valuable lessons that I will keep with me forever. And more preciously, it allowed me to spend time with my family, and treat them to our hard work which, if I dig deep to think about it, is really the point of it all.
love is the mother of grief when grief gets lost it cries and screams throws its tiny fists and cuts you deep with venomous words it curls in on itself uncertain where to go where to place its horror and guilt and anger --so it places them on you when you find grief, alone and afraid gently guide it and return it home where its mother is anxiously waiting because grief's mother, love unending with gentle whispers of good memories gratefulness and selflessness and generosity will raise grief to one day become a mother too