Today, a turkey dinner on a hospital tray. Sitting with my grandmother, helping her eat. She is confused. Hallucinating. It’s actually ironic; my grandmother, neurotically modest all her life, now keeps taking off her gown and trying to get out of bed. I figure by what the staff hasn’t said that they’ve found her wandering the halls, naked except for her diaper and the gauze around her wrapped injured leg. Nearly two weeks now of sitting with her hours on end, as a sort of anchor, so she doesn’t slip completely away. I am grateful for the task. Thank you, God, for making me useful to that miserable old woman in her hour of need.

It will be the first time in something like thirty years that I haven’t made a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving. The last vestige of a family tradition that never really was ours to begin with, finally over. I am not a cook. I like to bake. But, like all house slaves and mothers, I had learned to turn out a bird with the side dishes and serve it up to the brute who never so much as grunted a thanks in my direction while he watched football and stuffed his own gullet. Thank you, God, for freeing me from the lie that was that day.

My maternal grandparents had their own traditions. Thanksgiving was not a day they celebrated. In all my life, I can remember my grandmother baking only once, and it wasn’t a turkey, was a Mexican dessert, capirotada. She had a niece, married to a white man, who made the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Sometimes we went to her house and ate with the rest of the family. My grandfather would not take part in the festivities; he had good reasons. Thank God for little rebellions.

Because I never had it, the whole thing, I wanted it. I wanted the house, the home, the family, the food. The only thing I ever got was the food. I made the turkey in my family. I love the taste of turkey and cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes and gravy and stuffing. When I was young, the most delicious thing you could feed me was a turkey dinner. My grandmother used to take us to a cafeteria sometimes and if we had that, it was heaven to me. To this day, I love eating in cafeterias. Thank God for cafeterias.

Some years ago, one of my oldest and dearest friends called me on Thanksgiving to tell me that her husband, also a friend “with benefits,” had died. Now every Thanksgiving I think of him, and of her, and how we were young and happy before she was married, cruising all of Tijuana with her then-boyfriend and whatever boy I had chosen from one of the dances we went to, the particularly Mexican sun that shines on those streets and the way those streets smell making us feel so alive and so hungry for more life. Thank God for the drama and joy of being young pretty girls.

My mother died, too, around these days. I don’t remember now exactly when, but it was just past Thanksgiving as I recall, as we had to struggle to come up with the money to bring her here from Texas, and it was a bad time to come up with money. It was a bad time for a funeral. But after all, she was dead and had to come back to San Diego and had to be buried. My poor unfortunate mother, released at last from her misery. We had not spoken in forever, then when my brother and grandfather died, she had come to San Diego for the funerals. I think now of what it must have meant to her to have her two children so distant from her all these years, then one dead. I was suddenly ill in the car and couldn’t go with her to the airport; she turned and looked at me with love and concern, still her little girl. I reached through the window and hugged and kissed her. Thank God, after years of estrangement, for that one moment.

I love turkey. I love the traditional Thanksgiving meal. With so few left to feed, last year I made homemade pumpkin pies the day before. In the morning I made stuffing and prepared the bird, then stuck it in the oven and made the mashed potatoes and yams and the mixed vegetables. In the refrigerator, lime salad and three bean salad and ambrosia and the cranberry sauce. I brought out the good dishes and made coffee. When the turkey was done, I made gravy and croissants, then set everything out on platters and serving bowls. The four of us around the table bowed our heads. I gave thanks for the meal and remembered those no longer with us. The brute, invited for the day, took his plate and went off to the television. My grandmother and I ate well. My son, normally so picky, ate a little, the first time ever. Thank God for small favors.

For days after that, we ate turkey everything, some meals traditional, and then we had turkey sandwiches, turkey pot pie, turkey noodle soup, turkey mole. We finished the bird, bless his feathered heart. This year, today, I will not cook. I will feed my grandmother her turkey. I will go down to the cafeteria and have a turkey dinner myself. I will thank God for a functioning brain, second chances, and the opportunity to make something of them. The remains of the day may still make for a good meal.