Thanksgiving

British Honduras did not celebrate the United States Thanksgiving, of course, but Bucher and I agreed that it was important for the children that our family mark the day. We invited Callie and Ford Young to join us in whatever I was able to produce as a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

Multi-talented Ford, a geologist originally from Oregon, was manager for Gulf Oil Company, which was drilling in the Yalbac area near the Guatemalan border. Callie embodied the graciousness of her New England background. She and I found that our grandmothers might have been soul-mates, their admonitions were so similar. Although they were U.S. Citizens, Callie and Ford had spent years in Colombia, Nicaragua, and Belize. They had drifted away from celebrating U.S. holidays by themselves. Callie in particular looked forward to helping us celebrate the traditional holiday.

Just as eggs had been the main ingredient in celebrating our first Belize Easter, so a turkey was the prime requisite for Thanksgiving. My attempts to find one were fruitless. I finally admitted the sad possibility of our having chicken for Thanksgiving Dinner.

I told the whole story of my plans and problems to my hairdresser, Anita Lindo, when I went in for my regular Wednesday appointment. She was a warm, capable person who had become a good friend. I was relaxing under Anita’s soothing ministrations when she suddenly stiffened, shrieked “Your turkey!” and dashed out of her shop, leaving me lathered and lost.

About twenty minutes later she returned triumphantly to announce that she had my bird. She explained that she had glanced out her riverside window as she was teasing my shampoo into suds. She saw a dory being paddled past with a load of live turkeys. She raced out of her house and down the few blocks to the public market, where she intercepted the dory man as he docked at the market wharf. Anita had first choice of the gobbling birds.

Anita finished my hair and I paid her for her usual services plus her extraordinary one. She handed me the trussed but vocal turkey, which I tenderly placed on the back seat floor of my car. I drove home elated.

Sonia was given charge of the bird. In due course it emerged from her less-than-tender attention. I had never seen as funny-looking a turkey in all my life. Plump it was not. If it had been a person, I might have described it as rangy, with all the implications of muscle and sinew of that word. I was nonplussed at the breastbone, the ridge that should have topped a flare of fleshiness. It was a strong, curving “S” from one end to the other.

There was no time to worry about beauty or even toothsomeness. Thanksgiving was upon us. I stuffed the peculiar bird with my mother’s traditional dressing, and put it into the oven. It emerged some hours later, the most perfectly cooked golden glory of my lifelong cooking career.

Our Thanksgiving dinner was a success. Callie and Ford joined us in laughing at our pièce de résistance, which was a joy to behold and a pain to chew.