Someday We’ll Laugh About This … Right?

One of my favorite features of Facebook is the time capsule/memory thing they do. A week ago one of my favorite videos of all time popped up, and I watched it a few times, soaking in the memories. In the video, Thomas is about six. He is staring at our Thanksgiving turkey, which is sitting on a platter on the counter, waiting to be barbequed. He tells me, “I’m going to talk to the turkey.” In answer to my question of why he wants to talk to the turkey, he informs me, “Because.” (Well, of course. What was I thinking?)
He leans in close and says, “Excuse me, turkey, do you want to play?”
A beat later he exclaims, “Oh no. His head is gone. Mommy, his head is gone. We must find him.”
He reaches out and tentatively pats the turkey (a big deal, as he doesn’t like weird textures) and I tell him we will need to wash his hands now that he’s touched it. He says OK, and proceeds to wipe his hand across the counter and then on his pants. I ask if he’s ready to wash up now, and he says, “No. No thank you.” (Again, what was I thinking?)
I ask if he’s finished talking to the turkey and he says yes. I say, “Do you want to thank him for being our Thanksgiving turkey?”
He leans in and then says, “Oh, I’ll bring him over to the table.” When I tell him we need to cook it still he groans in disappointment, and then observes again, “His head is gone. We must find it so the turkey will move.”
I tell him I don’t think we’ll find it, and he absorbs this for a moment. I say, “Happy Thanksgiving, buddy.”
He leans in close to the turkey and shouts, “Happy Thanksgiving to you, chicken.” (Which has become a phrase in our house each year. Obviously.)
He’s bigger now, but the way he processes information is still one of my favorite things. A week ago we were driving somewhere and he said, “Mom? What is Noah’s Ark?”
I proceeded to tell him the story in a somewhat abbreviated form: It’s a story from the Bible, God’s not happy with the world, tells Noah to build an ark and gather animals. That there were 40 days and 40 nights of rain and the flooding of the earth, wiping out everything that wasn’t on the ark. The ark finally lands on a mountaintop and when the water receded, Noah and his family and the animals went out to repopulate the earth. Thomas took it in and then asked a couple of clarifying questions.
First, what mountain? I said we think it was Mt. Ararat, which I vaguely remembered as being in Turkey. He wanted to know if there was snow on the mountain, and I said I believed there is snow there most of the time. He wanted to know if there was a restaurant on the mountain, which I recognized as a feature in both a Scooby Doo cartoon and an episode of The Backyardigans. I said no, there was no restaurant up there. The next question was, “What about the umbrella?”
I was puzzled, and asked, “What umbrella?”
“Noah’s umbrella.”
I had to tell him that umbrellas hadn’t been invented yet, to which he responded with a long, hard silence and then his hum of processing.
Apparently a vengeful deity and a flood of Biblical proportions and a massive boat getting stuck on a mountaintop was entirely within the realm of belief, but no umbrella? Now we have a problem.
Thomas didn’t say “mama” until he was nearly three, even though I was his favorite person on the planet. That we can have actual conversations now is something I don’t take for granted – indeed, I give thanks every day that we have been able to connect with him. He makes me laugh, he makes me proud and he makes me amazed every single day. He reminds me that “thanksgiving” is a verb, not just a day on the calendar.  
Happy Thanksgiving to you, chicken.
Juliana LeRoy wears many hats, including wife, mother, paraeducator and writer. She can be spotted around Windsor gathering material, or reached at ml****@so***.net.