When Life Gives You Turkey Wings…
It was around week three when my grandmother caught me and my little brother pooling our money to buy dinner for ourselves.
My dad had found a sale on turkey wings at our local supermarket and decided he could remix them as many times as he needed until we ate them all: smothered turkey wings, turkey soup, turkey curry, barbeque turkey wings, turkey sandwiches, turkey salad. If you can name it, we had it with turkey.
I was 16 years old, and the tater tots and frozen pizza my high school served at lunch had become a welcome reprieve from the turkey we had nightly when I got home.
It’s funny because none of us had spoken about it until that day. But somehow me, my little brother, and my grandmother had descended upon the living room and were officially in cahoots. My dad was at a meeting at church, and my grandmother overheard us trying to decide between Taco Bell and Quizno’s based on how much money we each had.
“Ya’ll tired of having turkey every night huh?” she said, letting out a deep belly laugh. She sat down on the chair across from the sofa we were sitting on and handed us a 20 dollar bill.
It was one of those moments we’d had time and time again with our grandmother. She was so proud of our dad and she understood that even in sneaking around to buy our own food, we were doing it out of respect.
Feeding us was a love language for my dad, something we bonded over. The thought of complaining about a meal he made never really felt right. So, behind his back we’d go — cracking jokes and buying our own little snacks when he wasn’t around.
Eventually (maybe around week 5?), my dad got in on the joke, too. We’d sit in the kitchen and brainstorm how he could cook the turkey differently and, at times when we couldn’t come up with something good, we’d just order pizza or Chinese food.
Now that we’re older, the tale of how we ate turkey for eight weeks straight has become one of those family memories we sit back and laugh over. You’d think that we had fallen on hard times, that food was hard to come by. But no. My dad is just thrifty that way. If there is a sale on something we can use, he’s going to buy it and he’s going to buy it in bulk.
I’ve thought a lot about what fatherhood must be like for my dad, considering I’ve never really spoken to him about his own father. I’ve never met my paternal grandfather. I know that my dad was raised by strong women. I know that he went to visit his father in Chicago a few years back. But really, that’s all I know. And since my father has never really brought him up, I haven’t bothered to ask.
What I know for sure is that my dad is doing fatherhood his own way. Even in my 30’s, he’s a pillar for me. In a lot of ways, those turkey wings are a metaphor for how he’s managed to show up for me in different ways throughout my life.
He has held me accountable when I wasn’t being my very best. He’s challenged me when I needed to be challenged, and comforted me when I needed support. Lately, he’s been great for having honest conversations about politics and Blackness and revolution. And even with all of that, he can also make me laugh to the point of tears.
He’s not your run-of-the-mill, one-time Thanksgiving turkey. He’s the kind of meal that keeps you guessing, but keeps you nourished. While we laugh about turkey-gate as a family, we never talk about how that moment — those eight weeks — was so beautifully illustrative of my father’s consistency in our lives.
He’s not perfect by any means, but he’s ours. And for over 30 years he’s managed to adapt to every change, good and bad, that life has thrown our family’s way. He teaches us that when life gives you turkey wings, you can make a stew, a sandwich, or even just some white rice.
But you don’t give up. You keep going. You make something good.
