The year a mother’s turkey encountered a son’s new vegetarian ways

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“Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.” — Vladimir Nabokov

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Forty-four years since my last taste of roasted turkey, its beloved aroma still evokes fond (and one not-so-fond) memories of Thanksgivings past.

How easily I recall them. Here’s one: Awakening to the smell of “your mother’s turkey,” as Dad called it, already roasting in “your mother’s oven,” and my stoic Dad, never one to wax poetic, amazed us when he said, “I hope this is what heaven will smell like.”

Here’s another: Eavesdropping on the kitchen chatter between Mom and my grandmas as they cooked Thanksgiving dinner together. Their Charles Dickens-like, colorful recollections of their long-gone relatives, friends, husbands and long-ago sweethearts, their muted secrets about a certain neighbor, mahjong player, congregant and, maybe best of all, their snooty critiques of so-and-so’s flawed recipes kept me entertained for hours.

Thanksgiving might have been the most enjoyable holiday of the year for me, maybe because it wasn’t one about religion for a change but instead, all about family, food and more food. Noshing nonstop was encouraged, as was arguing with friends over whose mom’s turkey would be the biggest and tasted best. One time Hershey Bigos and I got into a second grade-like “fist fight” at recess about all that. No punches were landed, of course. But that didn’t stop our Principal Blunt from calling home to report the incident. Mom said to me, “You shouldn’t fight about turkeys.” Then she administered a playful swat on my tush. Mom loved that I’d defended her and her Thanksgiving turkey.

One Thanksgiving a few years later, I wish I’d remembered that sweet moment between us.

I’d recently moved to a small town out West because it was a haven for leftover ’60s hippies and wannabe new-agers like I think I wanted to be. Aching to assimilate, I morphed from a crew-neck sweatered, Gant-shirted Midwestern suburban 20-something into a lover-of-all-things-nature transcendentalist, bound and determined to swear off eating all-things meat.

Home for the Thanksgiving holiday, I was eager to flaunt the latest me to my family. They seemed impressed or at least amused with my obligatory beard, flannel, bandanna and Birkenstocks; neither one when I added those four scandalous words:

“And I’m a vegetarian.”

I might as well have announced switching my allegiance to the Green Bay Packers.

Seared into my memory to this day are the enraged rants of a despairing mother:

What kind of son doesn’t eat meat?

For god sake, what’s happened to you?

Who put you up to this?

Thank god Grandma Minnie and Ida aren’t alive for this!

My god, it’s Thanksgiving!

I was an unsettled twenty-something, still unsure about most everything and much too headstrong to hear the wisdom of life’s simple truths: Like when later, out of Mom’s earshot, Dad said to me, “Would it have hurt you to wait until after Thanksgiving?” “How can someone who went to college be so dumb?”

For the next two days, I ate my lentil soups, tofu on toast (“What the hell is tofu?” demanded Dad) and snacked proudly on raw vegetables. As for Mom’s braised brisket, lamb chops, cow’s tongue, “Saturday Night Steak,” chopped liver, matzo ball chicken soup, hamburger casserole, corned beef hash, liver and onions, and gedempte fleisch (aka pot roast), somehow I held out. Until Thanksgiving dinner. Because this happened:

After Mom dimmed the dining room lights and candles as was her tradition with much fanfare, she set her turkey center stage in front of Dad. The moment of truth came when Dad began carving slices of “your mother’s turkey” and placing them on each plate — including mine.

Dads can be smart. He’d already spoken his piece to me. This time, as he handed me my plate, his eyes spoke volumes. “Do the right thing.”

I decided my vegetarian ways could wait.

Several days after, I received a large box in the mail containing several Folger’s coffee cans neatly stuffed with Mom’s aluminum-foil-wrapped, still-moist, buttery turkey leftovers. A note was taped to one of the cans:

“Just in case. Love, Mom.”

I warmed the leftovers in the oven.

The gorgeous aroma returned. I laughed (like I am now as I write this) remembering Mom and my grandmas in their greasy, flour-coated aprons finger-tasting their recipes, smoking, laughing, bickering and humming Old World Yiddish tunes while they prepared our Thanksgiving meal.

Helen Keller said, “Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.”

There would be many more false starts and do-overs until finally, and quietly, I gave up meat for good. But the brain is amazingly stubborn.

Those gorgeous aromas and the sweet and (sometimes) painful memories of Thanksgiving pasts have remained, thankfully.

Dick Schwartz lives in St. Louis Park.