I don't remember how many years my family didn't celebrate Thanksgiving. I don't remember which years they were, either. I remember my mother, looking like a car wreck, her face distorted with something like agony, picking her way through some sloppy crap the hospital staff called turkey with gravy. I remember wondering when she was going to die, and if she'd wither away or if she'd break a lightbulb and drag it across her arteries to hasten the process. I remember the darkness on Route 81, and how gloomy Cortland looked, even in the dark. I remember playing the "name-that-tune" game in the car with my father. I always beat him, usually even on the old 'seventies stuff. I remember falling into a doze somewhere between Cortland and Binghamton. I always woke up just before the Mygatt Street exit, and never could explain how.

My mom was hospitalized when I was eleven or so, for an eating disorder. She'd get out of the hospital, and then she'd end up back in it. Things got especially bad for her around Hallowe'en and Thanksgiving. Things "triggered" her. I knew what "triggered" meant. Hell, I knew the differences between the side effects of each of the antidepressants and anti-anxiety pills. You pick up on those things when you're pretty sure, for a good number of years of your adolescence, that your mom wants to off herself. You try to figure out why. You try to make sure it's not your fault. You try to make sure that you're not fucking things up more. You try to figure out what you're supposed to do to make things better. Maybe some kids just sit back and play video games and shit. I turned into a freaking twelve-year-old psychiatrist.

Every Thanksgiving, my dad and my brothers piled into the car and rode up to see my mom in the hospital in Syracuse. We saw her pretty much every weekend anyway, so it wasn't like some big extraordinary thing, to be able to see her. I've still got Route 81 memorized.

We got to have lunch with her. That was a special treat. Usually, the Eating Disorder Unit (EDU) didn't eat with family or visitors around. I guess it triggered people or something. On Thanksgiving, they served the traditional turkey, potatoes, stuffing... all that crap. The potatoes and stuffing were bland, and the gravy always tasted like it had been strained out of some sort of creepy brown chemical bath. The turkey was mostyl just strings of meat-like substance. And the EDU proposed to HELP people want to eat!?

Each year, I spent lunchtime trying not to cry. Each year, I failed. I don't know if anybody ever noticed. You'd cry too if you were a horribly lonely, gawky, ugly junior high student who honestly couldn't find it in her heart to be thankful for anything other than the fact that her mom hadn't killed herself yet.

And my dog, Heidi. I was thankful for her.

Visiting hours were extended a little bit on Thanksgiving. So we got to stay for awhile. The boys would bust out the art supplies and scribble for a couple of hours, or we'd do a puzzle. And then we'd say goodbye and hug our mom, and leave. I always had a sneaking suspicion I'd never see her again. Leaving was hard. But I was quiet, and didn't make a fuss or anything. John, the youngest, was the one who cried and bellowed and all. But he was always doing that; it wasn't anything unusual.

Usually, we stopped and got fast food on the way home from Syracuse. A couple of Whoppers were our dinner. But on Thanksgiving, even the Burger Kings are closed. NOTHING is open on Thanksgiving night. Everybody goes home to spend their evening with their family, gnawing on drumsticks and watching the Big Game on TV. All those Burger King employees remove their visors and sit around the table with aunts and uncles and parents and cousins, all talking at once about somebody's ailments, somebody's new job, the state of world politics, and the Big Game. Everybody had that. Even Burger King employees. Everybody but me.

The only restaurant open on Thanksgiving was a place called The Ground Round. There might have been a Denny's open, too, but my dad wouldn't eat there. He said they gave you food poisoning. So, we always went to the Ground Round. Cheeseburgers for Thanksgiving. I always ordered bacon on mine. It always took them about five freaking hours to bring our food out. In the meantime, they kept refreshing a basket of questionably stale popcorn that they brought out when they brought us to our table. My dad always said: "don't fill up on popcorn, kids." But by the time we got our food, we were starving again, and we always scarfed everything down.

And I always felt bad, because my mom was in this awful hospital where you had to get a nurse to accompany you to the bathroom. And she had this disease where she was afraid of food and couldn't eat it... And here I was, every Thanksgiving at the Ground Round, chowing down on a bacon cheeseburger and french fries. But then again, everybody ELSE got a family and a big meal, and lots of lively conversation. My family consisted of my two dweeby brothers who apparently saw nothing wrong with the way we had our Thanksgivings anymore, and my dad, who always looked distant and exhausted and depressed. A counselor or a social worker might have said that we were "in crisis," at least my dad and I. It wouldn't have been far from true. You know that thing about leading lives of quiet desperation? We were quiet about our desperation. We pretended like everything was fine. Like everybody else was missing out by not having a Thanksgiving cheeseburger at the Ground Round. Who the hell needs turkey, and kids shouting, and some old man bitching about how times have changed, and somebody sticking black olives onto each of their fingers? Who needs sparkling juice, or the smell of boiling potatoes? Who needs the yearly struggle with the card table, set up for the kids to eat at? Who needs the childish custom of somebody dropping peas on somebody else's plate and yelping, "I pead on your plate"? Who needs the tiresome shaking of the gravy thickening over the sink, and somebody making a crude remark about how a woman's place is in the kitchen, shaking the thickening so that her ass jiggles? Way back in the day, before my mom got sick, everybody used to laugh at that one. An aunt would pelt an uncle in the head with an oven mitt. And then the two of them would take turns "peaing" on each other's plates.

Who needed it? I mean, fuck it. So my mom was spending her days locked up and trying to die, and my dad was spending his days working a lot and looking miserable. So we didn't talk to the aunts and uncles and grandparents anymore. So I had no family. And so we had no Thanksgiving. So what? We had cheeseburgers and the "name-that-tune" game, and my mom would be out by Christmas, and we'd decorate the tree and play Mannheim Steamroller music and pretend everything was great.