It’s almost Thanksgiving…a time to rejoice in our many blessings and spend time with family and friends. It is also a time of year that I have to deal with my turkey issues. I have prepared countless dinners meals for my family over the last decade, and have even hosted Thanksgiving dinner for the past several years…and I have YET to cook a turkey. The whole thing freaks me out - and let me tell you finding some hairs on a Purdue oven roaster a few years has not helped the cause. (So sorry…but I can assure you it was more traumatic to see than for you to read about…)

But I’ve decided that this is the year that I have to buck up and be a grown-up. No longer will I ask my mom to bring the turkey with her to Thanksgiving Dinner (thanks, Mom!) - I am going to do it myself and hopefully I will not need therapy afterwards. And yes, I’ve been like this since I was a small child - feeling bad for the animals and questioning their role in the circle of life. In fact, when I was about 14, I unfolded to my parents my brilliant and well-thought-out career plan to become an attorney that represented the animal in abuse cases. I would fight for my client, who could not fight for himself. I so believed in this seamless plan and felt so sure that it was my calling - until my dad shattered my hopes and dreams with the simple question, “Who will pay you?”  They thought the whole thing was hysterically funny.

And apparently this kind of thing is genetic, because my 1^st grader came home the other day declaring that she was not going to eat turkey on Thanksgiving because she feels bad for the turkeys. I suddenly saw so clearly myself in her that I had to just stop and smile. And I told her that was fine, and that I might not either. Because it was the truth. And even though I knew these questions were going to come sooner or later, I was not prepared to answer them. And let me just say that I will continue to be thankful that we have “special” names like pork, ham, bacon, steak, and meat…because she is clearly not piecing that together.

Where was I? Oh. Maybe the problem is that we are so far removed from our food sources these days, that we’re downright spoiled. We go to the grocery store and the turkeys are all plastic wrapped, weighed, and labeled. There is even a turkey calculator for figuring out how big a bird to buy! The bird it cleaned and giblets are all packaged up and neatly tucked inside (ew!). I’m sure that women long ago (and even today in some parts of the world) had to work a LOT harder to get a turkey on the table. I have absolutely no facts on this, but I imagine them having to physically chase down the turkey -- guessing its weight as it ran around squawking -- bang it over the head, drag it back to the kitchen, make sure it has passed on, then begin the painstaking process of preparing it for the oven. No thank you.

My point is that even though I still believe that it is harder to be a mom today that it was 50, 100, or 1000 years ago (*See below), where turkeys are concerned, I’m quite certain we moms have it pretty easy. So, I need to stop being such a sissy, and be grateful there is Wegmans. I mean, seriously, how bad can cooking my first turkey be? And therapy is not that expensive, right?

*Moms today should cook healthy and tasty meals, clean with environmentally-friendly products, and entertain for friends and family -- while raising well-adjusted, well-mannered, popular, nicely groomed, academically challenged (but not over-stimulated!) children. And all the while being fabulous and supportive wives who exercise regularly, hide our grays, be politically active, volunteer at a shelter, be a Room Mother, a Sunday School teacher, and a blood donor. With a smile on our faces and fashionable shoes on our feet (and of course no Mom Jeans.) Then again, moms today do have the Swiffer WetJet, the Toilet Wand, and the Chick Fila drive-through. These 3 things ALONE might even the score!