A turkey’s thanks

Tom turkey forages for food under the evergreen fir tree in the middle of the quad separating the two five-story wings of multi-purpose building B at Shenyang Aerospace University where we conduct our Oral English classes. We have seen daily since August a turkey scratching the dirt and pecking on any remaining bugs and worms on the ground before the onset of the current winter snow, sans a Tara turkey for company but with five Rhode Island red hens roaming freely like fowl in the wild.

The turkey’s existence gives us pause.

The university maintenance staff lets this bird menagerie reside in the minimally manicured yard (presumably allowing the roosting and nesting in the shrubs and trees) and in this first week of three inches of snow on the ground, our tropical blood is apprehensive that the below zero temperature might harm our “farm” animals. Thus we were surprised to see our turkey and hen facing the elements without any seeming adverse effect, this day before the White House traditionally pardons a cousin halfway across the globe.

Our turkey does not look fat for the traditional American Thanksgiving oven but seem lean and healthy, though a bit emaciated in his gobble-gobble gobbling in this academic neighborhood, but its winter adaptation skills seem intact as it struts proudly around, impervious to the seeming indifference of the humans for its survival and safety.

That indifference extends to the charcuterie where turkey (called houjie, the “fire chicken,” due to its red wattles) is not a preferred fare on the dining table as compared to the chicken and the duck, though U.S. Chinatowns will hang the bird upon request, for their Pilgrim and Wampanoag commemorated tables. In fact, turkey is not a common item on Zhongguo’s cuisine.

In our mind, the turkey in our Chinese neighborhood in its limited consciousness is quite of grand stature and a confident creature, knowing itself to be a turkey without apology nor hesitation. I could not help compare my quad’s “turkey” to our common homo-sapiens-turkeys along Paseo de Marianas, CNMI, or Main Street, USA.

Let’s assume for the moment that we are paradigmatic, so on any given day, we stand on tiptoes staring at our past and yearning for the comfort of bygone days because we are certain that were we able to do it all over again, we know exactly what to repeat, and are all too sure of what to avoid. Weak-kneed and jelly-spine’d, we dreadfully anticipate an unknown future, livid in our vivid imagination of what we do not wish it to be, and fearful of the uncertainty and unwanted surprises it may bring us.

Then we notice the quagmire of where we are at the location and time we presently occupy; we are disdainful of its limits, as we are cowardly to explore its possibilities.

This may be a caricature of a straw turkey but my neighbor tells me to keep going.

Gracefully, life calls our name to remind us that our being is already etched in the proverbial golden annals of history from the onset of our winsome conception to the celebrated completion of our existence, and that the quality of our journey in between is freely and wonderfully a matter of our choosing. Still, I ignore life’s message and would rather blame someone like Uncle Ben and his ilk, or Obama, for my miseries.

It is then that life shakes my foundations, bursts my balloons, and makes it perfectly clear that much as I wish to relive the past, it is gone and will never be ever again. Unable to forget, we are, nevertheless, able to forgive. Forgiven, the past is “given for” the future, a fodder that can fertilize our imagination and excite our anticipation.

It is then that as we cower over the threat of an impending future, we are confronted by the reality that tomorrow will never come. It never does. Its sheer openness violates our self-righteous excuses and our bloated sense of self-importance as the beginning and end of each moment is rendered fresh anew by the nature of existence itself; it becomes clear that life’s daily challenge of daring adventure and its care of awe-filled exploration is all ours for the taking with every moment of our existence.

When our turkey-ness manages to get assaulted by our native humanity, NOW seeps into the morrow of our bones, into the corpuscles in our blood, to the cells in our muscles, the synapses in our brains, and the electro-magnetic tentacles of our energy connections; suddenly, awareness becomes an active and festive engagement in the here-and-now. And we are, oh, so suddenly and so quietly, but fully, profoundly and reverentially, thankful.

Still a turkey, but now with a grudging but knowing recognition of Tom Turkey as I pass his surviving hen entourage along the quad’s frozen pathway, I am, nevertheless, a grateful one. And in the familiar greetings that my exams-battered and sleep-deprived students now have taken to greeting each other, “This is the day we have. We can live each day, or sleep it away. This is the day we have.”

Under my breath, I utter, and deeply: I am grateful!

Today, I have a great Thank You turkey day.