12/10/07

The boots had been sitting in a bag for weeks. They’d been moved from front hall to bathroom to tub and outside as needed, and I didnt know what to do with them. I’d worn my galoshes when I’d gone to help slaughter 3 turkeys the Thursday before Thanksgiving at a farm in upstate NY. That powerful first for me went very calmly and cleanly and my boots remained unmarked. I was surprised, but pleasantly - I had worn the boots and my raincoat with the expectation that they would get covered in blood - ruined.  I wore them again that Monday when I went to help slaughter the 24 turkeys we (my ethical kosher meat venture, Kosher Conscience) would need for the holiday. I was out of my mind with details and satisfaction and fear, but also relieved that I’d had the warm up the week before so I knew what the process would look like, feel like. That day went very differently from everything I expected and my boots by days end had quite a bit of blood on them, as did my  clothes and my skin. My skin and my clothes needed to be washed, no question. If only for sanitary purposes if not for comfort as well. But the boots became less clear, for reasons I didn’t see coming.

At the end of the 14-hr day that was supposed to have been 5, I was in a rush to get home, and to get my valient and grossly overworked shochet back to his family as well. I threw my bloody boots in a large plastic bag and brought them home, intending to wash them in the bathtub.

But I didn’t. I left them in the hall. And then the tub and the bathroom. I wasn’t quite sure why, though in retrospect it should have been clear. When I ate that turkey I’d so carefully held and plucked and kashered, I was so overcome with the sanctity of the process and it’s life that it felt not only repulsive to gorge on it’s flesh but it felt disrespectful to just throw away its bones and its carcass, like so much garbage. I’d wanted to bury it, which also felt ridiculous. I’d wanted to leave in the woods for other animals to eat and for it to return to nature in some way. I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me that just washing away its blood, as if it was dirt would be something I wouldn’t be able to do. I couldn’t just scrub it away, watch it go down my drain, whether I knew it or not.

And then it rained today. I’d been in the house all day, working, and was feeling cabin feverish. Despite the cold and wet, I needed to go outside. And as I went to go, I knew what I wanted. I put on those boots and I walked outside. I walked through puddles. I walked along the curb as water rushed over my feet. I let the rain run down the sides. And when my boots were clean, I went home and put them away.  Rain looms large in our ritual cleansing and today I have a deeper sense of why.

11/27/07

I have a confession- I’m a glutton. I love to eat, often to excess, always with delight. While I try to curb that urge for both health and vanity reasons for most of the year, Thanksgiving is the one day I give over the reigns and plunge deep into the desire to stuff my face. There’s a strange delight in eating, even when it’s being done in an unhealthy fashion. But no one said pleasure is always good for you - junkies don’t get hooked because heroin feels bad. Anyway, I am usually surrounded with a cacaophany of indulgent expectation at my Thanksgiving table, with everyone smacking and chomping, expressing their desire, their lust, to eat and am I right in the thick of it with them, smelling and savoring and waiting and gorging. Every year, until this one.

I hear the same things I always heard- everyone’s hunger, their need to eat. But I didn’t join in. I felt a man apart, sitting at the table but in a bubble, having a different experience from those around me and, honestly, from all my past Thanksgivings. I was about to eat a turkey I had held, had craded as it was shechted, had felt the life force drain from. I had plucked it, I had kashered it and cooked it and now I was about to eat it on this my favorite holiday (yes, the secret’s out dont tell my mom or my rabbi- despite my fervent love of all things Jewish, Thanksgiving is my favorite chag. Perhaps it’s because we can actually do things on it, like go out, hike, shop etc. in ways observant Jews can’t on Jewish holidays. Perhaps it’s because it was a secret temple to my food lust. Which is now transforming).

The idea of gorging on the flesh of this bird wasn’t just unappetizing. It was repugnant to me. The very idea made me nauseous. The sanctity of it’s life, the gift that I had in eating it to sustain me was so alive in me that I ate it reverently, slowly, savoring each bite in a way I’d never experienced. And as I ate, I experienced a sense of thanks I’d never known- to G-d, to life, to nature, to this animal. And I ate carefully, thoughtfully, concsiously. And when I was full- not stuffed, but no longer hungry- I stopped. And I doled out pieces of my turkey to the few curious diners at the table who expressed interest. I explained to them where it had come from, what my connection had been. I asked them to consider this when eating it, to not just chomp mindlessly and to eat what was given, so as not to have any thrown away. I told them that I had learned a new sense of thanksgiving and that my favorite holiday had taken on new meaning for me. I hope that  sense will stay with me, that my relationship with the holiday I love, as with all things I love, will deepen and mature. I hope others are able to find it as well.

Photo: William Nicholson Miss Jekyll’s Gardening Boots 1920