When I first moved to the South there was more than a little bit of culture shock.  Luckily, I had made friends with a woman whose sense of humor was almost as great as her sense of adventure.  I would drag Laura out to eat all over the county as part of my “research” as a food critic in a new country. She, in return, introduced me to the finer points of good Southern cooking beginning with the first time she invited me to Sunday dinner at her mama’s. We had fried chicken, and it was fantastic. The secret, according to her mama, wasn’t oil or lard. It was Crisco.

Not too long ago, Laura’s mama passed away. She went as she would have wanted to—asleep in her own bed, still mistress of her own house. We began the sad process of cleaning out the cupboards and let me tell you, I almost wept when we discovered not one, not two, but twelve cans of Crisco stockpiled on one of the pantry shelves. The sight brought me back to the last time I had mama’s fried chicken.

I traced my acclimation to the new climate by the food. I used to joke about it with the friends and family I’d left up north. When they were shivering under late winter frosts, I was planting spinach in the garden. While they were picking over the wilted late-winter produce in their grocery stores, I was picking up quarts of strawberries at the local farmers’ market. I passed some kind of invisible milestone when I started using Martha White flour for my bread and Duke’s mayonnaise on my sandwiches. I was re-educated about the term “barbecue.” 

But when fall arrived, or what passes for “fall” in coastal North Carolina, I ran bang up against a wall of Yankee upbringing—so hard that it knocked me right off my high southern horse. I will always remember the unhappy, disoriented feeling I had sitting at my first Southern Thanksgiving dinner. I hardly recognized the meal in front of me; the fruit salad in the big bowl had mini-marshmallows all over it. There were oysters in the turkey stuffing. The turkey had been injected with something and dumped in a deep fryer. When Laura smiled at me and said “You want some chicken ’n pastry?” I turned gratefully in her direction, imagining a nice steaming chicken pot pie in a flaky golden crust. I was utterly shocked when she passed me a bowl of oily broth, swimming with shreds of boiled chicken parts and slimy lumps of dough that slid right off the spoon.  I froze, appalled, and then gingerly set the bowl to the side of my plate and turned back to the deep-fried turkey with sheer determination.

That first southern Thanksgiving meal did nothing so much as remind me that I was far from home—far from my mother’s cranberry bread, my dad’s jokes as he carved the turkey, my sister and brother’s fights over the gravy boat, far from the crowded and noisy bustle that was my far-flung family during the winter holidays. And I’ll admit that I didn’t adjust very well. Ninety-nine percent of the time I loved the warm, sandy country I’d come to, with its ocean breezes and low-set cotton fields. But Thanksgiving—my holiday, a New Englander’s holiday—was always a trial for me.

And as the seasons passed, that trial only became worse. Ruth, Laura’s mother, could be a cantankerous old cuss and she was harder to please every year. There was the year she decided it was okay to dip her snuff (Peach brand) at the table. The year she refused to be bothered cooking a turkey. The year she refused to be bothered to cook at all. Eventually, torn between the feeling that we couldn’t leave her alone on the holiday and the simple knowledge that, dammit, we had to eat,  Laura and I ended up cooking Thanksgiving dinner in our kitchen and bringing it to her (Ruth not wanting to be bothered with things like dirty dishes and cleaning up). Last year, she told us not to make turkey at all, but to bring her macaroni and cheese and a pint of reheated pulled-pork barbecue. As we sat down at her table to give thanks, I was feeling pretty glum.

Then this year, Ruth had a “spell” and fell down. She spent over a week in the intensive care unit and came home weak and disoriented—positive it was six in the morning instead of six in the evening; chewing us all out for lying when we said it was time for her to go to bed; unable to fend for herself in her own house. Suddenly Laura and I found ourselves re-assessing our lives. Would someone need to move in with Ruth so she could stay home? Could either of us live with a woman whose favorite television show was “The World’s Biggest Loser,” which Ruth played on the highest volume setting because she was all but deaf but refused to admit it? We didn’t know.

With a fair amount of patience on our part, and an even larger dose of sheer orneriness on hers, Ruth eventually recovered. And three weeks later, on the eve of Thanksgiving, we were making our usual plans to have dinner at her house. I was out of town most of that week, so I was pretty helpless when Laura called me to say that she had taken her own fall, and while it was nothing too serious, a badly-sprained ankle was keeping her off her feet. “Mama is going to cook Thanksgiving dinner,” she told me on the phone. I said nothing. What could I say? I hope she doesn’t get snuff in the stuffing? I knew I wasn’t at my best this time of year, but I did have lots of practice in enduring whatever meal (I use the term loosely) I would find on my plate.

We went over early, because Ruth still hadn’t quite adjusted to the whole time thing. She was running about an hour ahead of the rest of us (it is entirely possible that she didn’t believe in daylight savings time) so Thanksgiving dinner was likely to be served not at noon, but more like 10:30 in the morning. We brought our own coffee and our own Cokes, because Ruth was “recovering” and much to her disgust her doctors told her she couldn’t have caffeine. I secretly vowed that every time she dipped her snuff during the meal, I would take a nice, drawn-out drink of Coke and go “mmmmm!” really loudly, just to get even. 

Laura hobbled up the steps and I followed, our hands free for once of hot dishes and warm pans wrapped in towels. It was a beautiful day and the door stood open—and we were shocked to smell the unmistakable scent of fried chicken wafting through the screen door. “Mama?” Laura called uncertainly, but Ruth was deaf and didn’t hear us come in. But oh, that toothless smile when she turned around from the stove and saw us! She had shoved her walker out of the way against a wall. She was carrying a heavy platter all by herself. We walked into the kitchen and found a big bowl of home-made fried chicken, a pile of buttermilk biscuits, a bowl of mustard greens cooked in fatback, and a stewpot full of chicken ’n pastry. There was a pumpkin pie already on the table. 

We sat down to our meal in something of a daze. Ruth was in fine form, cussing the paperboy for skipping her this morning (I went out after dinner and found her paper in its box, where it always is. Ruth never did adjust to the fact they no longer threw it up on the porch). Dinner was great. Sure, the biscuits were Pillsbury microwave and the pie was store-bought. I didn’t care. Ruth sat across from me and smiled and reached for her snuff. I raised my can of Coke at her in a silent toast. I ate three pieces of fried chicken and had seconds on the mustard greens and thought, “Yes, I’m thankful, really thankful, to be here with her.” 

Although, when Laura asked “You want some chicken ’n pastry?” I refused. I wasn’t as thankful as all that.