The old woman felt weird, not cooking this year.

But she’d given up cooking Thanksgiving ever since the stroke paralyzed half of her body and forced her into an assisted living home.

Still, it was bizarre. Sitting on the sidelines, after all these years. Watching capable women bustle about the kitchen.

She watched her daughters and daughters-in-law lift large casserole pans, wash tall stacks of dishes, cracking open various bottles, jars, and plasticized containers of all shapes and denominations.

The old woman had prepared 54 Thanksgivings, solo. Fifty-four. And she’d been cooking Thanksgiving supper with her mother since before Franklin D. Roosevelt was a household name.

But now, she was doomed to sit in the bleachers. She rarely left the assisted living home—except for holidays like today.

As she watched her daughters move throughout the kitchen, she felt a strange mix of pride and sorrow. Pride, because her daughters were confident, adept mothers and homemakers. Sorrow, because life goes by so dang fast.

Her daughters removed the thawed turkey from its plastic wrapper. They placed the raw carcass onto a large cutting board. One daughter removed a big cleaver and began cutting the turkey in half while the other held the bird with both hands.

The old woman watched while one painstakingly began to lob the turkey in half, cutting through bone and tendon.

The old mother couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

“Stop,” she said.

The young women quit cutting. They just looked at their mom.

“Why are you cutting that turkey in half?” the old woman asked.

“What do you mean?” said the oldest daughter. “This is how we’ve been cooking turkey for years, Mama.”

The old woman smiled. “Why would you do such a thing? Cutting it in half?”

The daughters exchanged a look. “Becuase that’s how YOU always cooked turkey, Mama. You’d cut it in half.”

The youngest daughter explained. “Mama, every year, when we were girls, you’d cut the turkey in half, then put both halves into separate roasting pans. Don’t you remember that?”

The old mother smiled, remembering an oft forgotten era of life.

“Of course I remember,” said their mother. “But YOU don’t have to do it, too.”

The girls just exchanged stupefied looks.

The old woman said with labored speech. “Do you know why I cooked out turkeys that way?”

“No, Mama.”

“Becuase we were poor. Your father didn’t make much money at the mill. Our little apartment in Southside didn’t have an oven large enough to fit an entire turkey. And I didn’t even own a roasting pan that size, we couldn’t afford one. So I cut the turkey in half, and cooked each half separately. It was a necessity.”

The two young women put down the cutting utensils when they noticed tears in their mother’s eyes. The young women came to their mother. They embraced in a three-person hug-sandwich common to Thanksgivings, Christmas mornings, and Superbowl parties.

The old mother spoke through tears. “You two both have nice houses. You don’t have to struggle like we did. Your ovens are so big, you could cook two or three turkeys in ovens like that.”

“Maybe so, Mama,” said one daughter, wiping moisture from her mother’s eyes. “But we are a family, and this is just how our family does it.”