Thanksgiving Detox

Thanks to paper plates and giblets wrapped in paper, Thanksgiving at my house went off with relative smoothness.

Late the night before, while I prepared the turkey to soak overnight in salt water brine, I did not have high hopes for such a pleasant result. As I stuffed my hand in the main turkey cavity in much the same way I search, blindly, for my glasses if they accidentally fall off the nightstand, I came upon what I presumed to be the neck. It was frozen to the rest of the turkey, which was strange when you consider that the turkey I so carefully selected and paid for was labeled "fresh." Why the inside of my fresh turkey was a flaking ice cube is beyond me.

At any rate, I pulled on the neck. It wouldn't budge. Then I pulled some more. It still wouldn't move. Knowing nothing about turkeys, I wondered if was still attached to the spine, or something. Then suddenly it gave. I started, and then I screamed. I screamed so loud that one would have thought the gates of Hell opened and unleashed upon me the Ghosts-Of-Junior-High-School-Gym-Classes-Past. The Boss, who was situated behind me in a saucer, did not know what to make of it. So she started screaming, too. She was inconsolable for the better part of ten minutes. Her father patted her back and she bawled over his shoulder while I stood over the sink, my gloved hands clutching a long, frozen neck.

I thought about the way parents are not supposed to show fear. They are supposed to be a safe haven for their children. I wondered how that worked, exactly. It wasn't all that long ago that I was a child myself. When was I supposed to become fearless? When was I supposed to get myself together, reining in all the ragged ends of my dramatic and spastic (one of my friend's coined it "dramastic") personality? My daughter is 16 months old now and I show no signs of changing. Have I doomed her to a life of uncertainty and trepidation?

At any rate, she got over it. I bagged the neck and stuffed it into the freezer for my mom to take home, then I dumped my 20-pounder into the brine and called it a night. I wondered if I wasn't possibly forgetting something, but I didn't care enough to ponder the question too deeply.

At Thanksgiving dinner the next day, as my mother helped my husband carve a turkey I am proud to say was as moist and flavorful as I could've hoped, she peered curiously into the bird. "What's this?" She poked around with the electric knife, then she tried to stifle her grin. "I think you missed something."

"Oh, no," I said, the reality of my ignorance becoming clear. "It's the giblets, isn't it? I didn't take out the giblets."

She held out a paper-wrapped package of innards. "Yes,these are the giblets."

What I've been saying all along--which is that I know nothing about cooking a turkey--is no exaggeration. It's not that I forgot to remove the giblets. It's that I didn't know where the giblets were. When the neck popped out in a frozen mass the night before, I just assumed the giblets were included. It was easier to make that assumption than it would've been to violate another of that poor bird's orifices.

"Well, at least they were wrapped in paper," my mom said.

"That's for sure!" chortled my mother-in-law. "If they were wrapped in plastic, that turkey would've been toxic!"

I had to laugh, too. I mean, how could I not? As we all filled our plates and clinked wine glasses in thanks, I was already fat and happy with perspective. I was grateful for our large and ever-growing family, all present and accounted for; for our table full of food; and, of course, for giblets wrapped the old fashioned way.