The Best Roasted Chicken
My mom is dying, and thyme is my healer
This kitchen sink has carried me through a lot of tragedy.
“Ma’am, I am so sorry to have to tell you this. Your husband jumped from the top span of the bridge this morning.”
“Oh, well, Ok. I need a moment. I’ll be right back,” I respond as I turn my back and walk into the kitchen to finish my dishes and try to figure out how the next moment, the next everything else, will unfold. It is so much better that we get handed life in snack-size portions that we can digest before moving on, isn’t it?
To start the chicken, I melt a stick of unsalted butter and mix it with six finely minced cloves of garlic, about a teaspoon’s worth of fresh thyme and the zest of half a lemon.
My mom always said I use too much garlic. Wait, is it “said” now? Or do we still use “says”? She Is still alive but this morning, she sat on the edge of the bed in her hospital gown, sunken eyes bright yellow with jaundice.
She handed me the two halves of a broken breakfast sausage that had been in her purse for hours, days, maybe — and told me it was my old lipstick.
“Thought you might want it back, but it is kind of old.”
After washing and patting the 3–4 pound chicken dry, spread the butter mixture under the skin of the chicken and in the cavity. Brush it with olive oil. Into the cavity, place several sprigs of thyme, half a lemon, half of a yellow onion and a head of garlic with the top cut off.
Back to that trusty kitchen sink. Time to wash all this chicken debris off my hands. My mom always says (I’ve decided to stick with the active version for now) how it disgusted her when the men at her job would use the bathroom and not wash their hands afterwards. My dad used to say that he didn’t shake peoples’ hands because they often touched themselves inappropriately without washing their hands and he actually knew about the germs.
He was a doctor. Today I made the decision to start hospice with my mom. That brings back memories of my father and how I went through this with him. But it was different. He was on a feeding tube, would never walk again and his mind was shot. My mom’s mind is also gone, mostly, after years of drinking. But she can still walk, sort of. And she is eating. Very, very little, and only when it is forced on her.
Wait, eating! Yes, must get back to the chicken if we are ever going to eat tonight.
Put the chicken on top of a stick of celery, cut into three pieces, and a large carrot stick, also peeled and cut into three pieces. Sprinkle the bird liberally with salt and pepper and place it in the oven, preheated to 400 degrees.
The raw chicken reminds me of a freshly born baby. It is a little small, but the same color, same wet feel. When I had my son, and the fevered moment had passed, all the people were gone, he was gone, off to an incubator or wherever they place babies that were born out of an emergency C-section, I was laying alone on a stretcher in a hall, feeling the rush of birthing endorphins — and whatever else comes out of that — starting to subside.
I felt very alone.
And then my mom was there, suddenly standing and gazing into my eyes, pulling me out of my stupor, holding my hand and asking me how I was. She was the only one to ask me about myself in that moment.
She had not been there for the birth, or had she? I was going to do it naturally. My former husband and I had learned hypno-birthing, breathing together through the contractions, letting our son come through my breath. One of my best friend’s moms was our doula. It was supposed to be my friend, a certified doula. But our boy came early and she was still at home in California.
So she gave her mom a crash course over the phone. Her mom was a psychologist and had had four babies herself, so it made sense. She stood with us, telling me to imagine I was walking into the calm beach water, wading in gently. On the other side of me was a team of nurses yelling at me, “OK, now PUSH!!!!”
The contrast between the two vibes did nothing to help the situation.
In the end the baby wasn’t breathing and they had to perform the emergency C-section.
And there was my mom. But of course, the memory couldn’t just be the sweet awareness of her presence. Later, as soon as she could start talking, she reminded me that I was born via emergency C-section and I “should have told the doctor that, instead of being stubborn and thinking I would be different from her.” The doctor would have insisted I schedule a C-section. You know, because that was what she did.
Her way was always the right way.
So now the chicken roasts for about one hour and fifteen minutes to an hour-and-a-half, depending on the size. Baste it in the juices every 30 minutes. A thermometer inserted into the thickest point should read 165 degrees when it is done.
When will this all be done? I feel as though I am playing God by deciding to place her in hospice. But then I hear the voices of all the doctors in my head telling me her liver is beyond healing and she would never qualify for a transplant. She drank too much for too long and she only stopped about a month ago.
It feels like the humane thing to do, but she is so confused right now that I am not sure she will understand what is happening. She will definitely not accept it. This is the ultimate surrender of her control. And this whole month in which she has been in and out of the hospital, kicked out of the rehab facility for not eating, not taking her medications and not doing physical therapy, she has clutched her purse, pulling out her wallet (now divested of all the important items so I can use them to pay her bills and ensure they do not get lost in this eternal shuffle), constantly sorting through the items and asking for her now-useless keys.
Her struggle for control is palpable.
“Oh, shit! I forgot to baste the chicken.” I pull it out, spatter it with its own juices — it is getting a nice golden brown now — and place it back in the oven.
Golden brown. My mom used to take me to the beach for the day when I was little. She would lay in the sun, tanning, while I would hunt the shoreline for shark’s teeth and play in the aqua waters.
We never brought any friends. She never had any friends. She knew, as an only child, my friends were important to me and allowed time for sleepovers, but they were never at our house. She isolated, even then. We would clean the house together, making a game of it, listening to Michael Jackson loud through the stereo, stopping to dance.
But she always cooked alone. I wasn’t even allowed in the kitchen when she was cooking. I remember the carafe of white zinfandel (Is that even wine?) always chilling in the fridge. Little did she know that sweet, pink shit would be her poison.
The beach. I imagine I will have her cremated and we will scatter her ashes there. It is really strange to think of my mom as nothing but a bag full of ashes. But I have seen it before. I know how the body eventually becomes nothing but dust. There is a beauty in it, to me. The simplicity. With all of the complications of our lives at this point in time, in the end, it all comes down to the same thing.
For everyone.
Time to check the chicken. I do not want it to end up as a “bag of dust.” There are people counting on me. Expecting me to finish this chicken so they can be fed.
It is hard to imagine in the not-too-distant past, my mom had people counting on her. But all that is gone now, too. It is just me, my husband and my son that she speaks to. She has forsaken all else. Maybe that was her trade to King Alcohol. Or maybe that is just who she always was. Hard to tell. The two have been intermingled for so long.
The sound of the alarm tells me it is time to pull the chicken out of the oven. It looks perfect. Now it must rest for 10–15 minutes.
Rest. It sounds so sweet. I am not sure I will ever “rest” again. At least not for now. And I hope my mom is resting. I picture her in my mind’s eye, laying so still on that hospital bed, her hands no longer shaking with tremors as she desperately pulls out all the items in her purse.
The last time I saw her there she looked peaceful and she slept. I am hoping she can allow herself some vulnerability as she moves into this next — and possibly final — phase so that she can save grace and accept what is coming next, as much as she is capable.
When I stood at my kitchen sink doing dishes in the wake of my husband’s suicide, I was not in control of anything but those dishes.
Everything has changed.
I am back at that same sink again, now gently washing my hands. Feeling grateful, not so much for the sink itself, as the space it encompasses. I am in the center of my home here, and I feel safe and secure, a feeling I never really have in the presence of my mother.
I know I have inherited, through a combination of behavior and DNA, this need to control my surroundings, but I have learned, through dealing with the death of my first husband and the myriad other challenges life tosses us, to back off when the time calls for it. To just let go and it will work itself out.
Now I can own my space, own this moment, as much as I am capable of, at least, and know I am doing the right thing.
And that chicken is sumptuous.
Alright, so now to figure out the best gravy…