My brother Jay helps my mother, eighty-two, move back to Los Angeles. He puts her in the same apartment as his nanny, Lolo, where there is an extra bedroom. It’s near his house. She can walk to the ashram and to Erewhon, the old health food store where she used to buy all our vegetables when we first moved to California. She still follows the tenants of Ayurveda and eats kitchari with a small cut salad and bok choy or asparagus cooked in ghee, nothing else, three times a day.
It’s Thanksgiving. We have gathered at Jay’s. We are all in his kitchen, admiring the food my sister-in-law Macie has laid out, though we have all had a hand in cooking and prepping. Luke brined the turkey and we carried it down in the back of our car from Walnut Creek. Em’s boyfriend, Eric, has made the corn bread. Jay has prepared his favorite sweet potato marshmallow dish. We are laughing and chatting now, gathering our plates, serving ourselves. My mother hasn’t seen me eat meat since we started the Program. I have never admitted to her that I do. The last few times she was with us for Thanksgiving, I didn’t have turkey, but this morning Em and Eric; Luke and his girlfriend, Amanda; and Tim and I woke up at 4:00 A.M. and made the six-hour drive to Los Angeles, Luke’s brining turkey in the back of the car and on my mind. I’ve been looking forward to it all day. My brothers have continued to make it clear over the years that they want to be able to eat what they want to eat, but I haven’t. Over the phone and through email she and I continue to share diet tips; she is in support of the vegan powder I use, but I have never brought up the subject of my eating meat. There never came a time when her happiness didn’t feel tied to what I was eating. As we line up with our plates and forks, I consider forgoing the turkey. I feel all the old straitjackets descend, the old responsibility of being the only girl, her cohort. My mother is not eating anything. She had her kitchari earlier, though she is hovering in the kitchen, around the platters of sweet potatoes, string beans, salad, corn bread, turkey, watching what we each are choosing to put on our plates. It would be so much easier if I just didn’t have any turkey. But now she is laughing at something Macie has said and I spear a slice of breast and tuck it under my salad. She laughs again with Macie and I spear two more slices.
I approach the table set for twelve; the only seat not taken is beside my mother. I check that the turkey is still hidden under my salad as I take my seat. If I don’t pick it up or draw attention to it in any way, maybe she won’t notice it’s there. But I’ve chosen a slice with crispy skin, my favorite thing. It’s more than the skin, of course. Eating this meat, now, is a validation of me. A validation of all I’ve come to understand about myself, a validation of the journey and also of the arrival. Eating this turkey doesn’t mean I believe turkey is better for me than almonds or filberts or blended salad, but it does mean that I’ve created a life where there is room for less-than-perfect eating and where there is balance. Balance is its own kind of health, the kind I want most.
Beside me, my mother is holding a conversation with Braddy, seated on her other side. I eat some sweet potato, then a forkful of string beans, a spoonful of stuffing. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. After a few moments, I’m tired of stalling. Around me, everyone else is eating the turkey and it looks delicious. My heart is beating hard as I move the spring mix aside with my fork and stab the slice of turkey. Though she is still talking to my brother and isn’t looking at me, I can feel her awareness. Alarm bells of adrenaline go off inside me, and the periphery of my vision blurs as I raise the piece to my lips and take a bite. My heart is pounding so hard, I can’t taste anything. I chew anyway, swallow. She continues to talk to Braddy. I take another bite. She is still talking and responding to my brother as I swallow this bite, too. Had I expected her to shatter? Expected this to annihilate her? Jay calls to her from across the table and she answers, then she says something to Braddy’s son, Otto, seated beside Jay. Otto responds. I feel the anticlimax of this moment, the waste. All these years I carried around the guilt and the burden and this was all I had to do? I take another bite, and my heart is still pounding but not as hard now. I chew. I’m not comfortable. I still can’t taste the meat, though to her it must appear as though I’m eating this turkey easily. I look around the table at her children and grandchildren laughing with her and one another, enjoying this meal, their plates filled with beautiful food. What must she think of the fact that none of her offspring has followed in the extreme path she continues to take with diet and prescribed to us in our formative years? I wonder if it does indeed look like a careless, blithe decision to become the carefree eaters that my brothers and I must seem to her to be. Our easiness, now, belies all we have suffered, our struggles for normalcy over decades around eating. This is our gift to her: the sparing of any recrimination, the sparing of the personal battle we have each waged to get to who we are now.