I’m boiling turkey guts and fisheyes for tomorrow. No–not together, for they’re for separate courses, don’t you see. One to stuff the main meal, a dead bird. And the fisheyes will be sweetened for dessert.
My stuffing is so very like my mother made, my sister insists upon a separate bowl for her to take home later. Last year, I even brought it to my father’s house a day ahead so she could pick it up and use it in her bird.
The fisheyes are not, of course, real fisheyes. It’s tapioca pudding and for Thanksgiving, I make it eggnog-flavored. I’ve called it fisheyes for a long time now, and the story will be lost someday, but it all goes back to a biology class in high school, a dissected fish (one from those plastic jars you get with worm and frog, and I’ve forgotten what else) and a handsome young teacher. The fish-part I brought up to him from my more-than-filleted fish was from an eyeball, and I asked him what it was. He looked at me suspiciously, but patiently examined and explained once I revealed what part it came from. Cooked tapioca in its translucence is a dead ringer for it, and when I tell the little kids it’s fisheye pudding, they are more likely to eat it than if I called it by its name of tapioca.
We were nineteen once, around my dinner table; this year we’re four. Not the best year, perhaps, for the "kids" not to come home. But they will be here, and their kids as well on my father’s birthday for our Christmas celebration on the 12th. No, we’re really not all that weird a family. The early holiday is due to my niece’s Navy family moving to Spain before the end of December.
Then again, it may be the best year to break some ties of tradition. The world moves on ahead of us, and time may well forgive me for my fisheye pudding someday.
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