It took two people at the grocery store to find the canned cranberry sauce yesterday. It was on the bottom shelf of an aisle I’d walked down three times before I’d asked for help.

Then again, I’m old. I have also celebrated many Thanksgivings with canned cranberries ever since my Momma couldn’t make her cranberry salad, and then after she passed away.

She used to clamp a heavy metal grinder onto the kitchen counter, then would manually grind up those cranberries.

I found her recipe a few years ago. But in spite of having an electric gadget that would grind them I just put a can of cranberries in the ice box to chill.

Momma always regretted that she couldn’t teach me how to cook because she’d gone to work full-time when I was in the seventh grade. Then at Thanksgiving time, when I was an 18-year-old bride, Momma relegated me to bringing the relish plate. She continued that assignment into my second marriage and my thirties, and maybe my forties. But her excuse back then was because I was so busy “writing the paper.”

However, I did make turkey and dressing one year when my folks came to Hennessey for Thanksgiving.

My husband, Bill, had always carved The Bird at my folk’s house, and of course did the honors at ours. Except, he did it at the dining room table, and made a great to-do about it by sharpening the knife.

That’s when I saw, as did everyone else, a little package that fell out of the turkey. It included all the giblets: the gizzard, liver and heart.

Mommy didn’t like turkey, she always cooked “a big, fat hen,” or sometimes a ham, and made our Thanksgiving meals for several years after she and Daddy moved to Hennessey.

Then after my Daddy died, and Momma was unable to make dinner anymore, my son, Nick, cooked the bird. He lived in Tulsa back then and even brought the mashed potatoes, then made the gravy after he got here.

Momma probably brought Nicky’s favorite apple pie. I made the dressing, some sides, and a pumpkin pie because it doesn’t need a top crust. Oh yes, and Nick also brought homemade dinner rolls. He said he’d used my recipe, and they were really difficult to make. “My recipe?” “Yes,” he said. “It had ‘Mom’s Yeast Rolls’ at the top of the page.”

“That was Maw Henkell’s mother’s recipe!” I said.

However, it was a family recipe since Marjorie (Anderson) was one of my Ya-Ya Sisters. She was also my son’s favorite high school teacher who’d flunked her English class twice. If that’s not family then I don’t know what you’d call it.