Babe turned to me. "We survived, but the question is, is the house still standing? I can't look."

Glancing over his shoulder, I prepared myself for the wreckage of Rearickville.

Igor the Cat was sprawled on his back, his legs straight up. His tail had swished so many times it might have been broken. Igor spent the day hissing, snarling and running from the Jack Russell grandpuppy who pounced and chased the poor cat non-stop. If Igor could have, he'd have begged for Prozac, to which I'd have reported, "I took it all." Many people are unaware that sucking on Prozac all day instead of lemon drops can jumpstart a Zen experience.

I didn't decorate for the holiday. Instead, I asked the kids to gather leaves from the back yard. They thought up the live frogs on their own. My oldest grandson crafted a groundhog with his own hands from a brown paper bag and called it a turkey. Not wanting to stunt his creative spirit, I nodded outwardly and winced inwardly.

In our family we tolerate the vegetarian who eats nothing that previously wore furs or feathers, another who eats only Cocoa Puffs, and the daughter-in-law is on a hunger strike until she is given the green light to hire a live-in cook. The son, an enthusiastic jug wine drinker, eats anything dead or alive after sipping the grape.

Silly me for trying to restore the ambiance of a traditional sit-down dinner complete with football noise in the background. Butterball turkey, giblet gravy, dressing made from scratch and yams with marshmallows on top.

At four p.m., when I announced that dinner would be fashionably late, Lucifer's children began to entertain everyone by repeating every expletive I had uttered with regard to Pilgrims, Thanksgiving and phone calls made to the Butterball hotline after I discovered my turkey was still as hard as last year's Halloween corn candy. While they gleefully shared snatches of Mammy's unladylike behavior, I played a tape of my son's bass drum recital at age eight, hoping to muffle sounds of the frozen turkey bouncing around in the clothes dryer.

When we were about to sit down for dinner I thought, in the spirit of harmony, that the children should sit at a separate table. In a separate room. Next door. I was voted down.

A crowd of appreciative onlookers applauding a perfectly carved, golden brown turkey is a wonderful thing, but it means bupkis to Babe. He doesn't carve; he chops. With that in mind, I thought a private turkey chopping ceremony in the kitchen was appropriate. No way need anyone watch him hack up that turkey as if he were in a scene from "Saw II." But when everyone at the table began to look like Bosnian refugees, my son told his small, unsuspecting children to get in there and check on their grandfather.

"Stop," I yelled. "Babe is seriously battling an unarmed turkey with a Ginsu knife. Trust me. You don't want to get anywhere near that man."

My youngest grandson chomped down his fourth bowl of Cocoa Puffs and while the rest of us were rethinking cold cereal as a viable alternative to real food, he made "mmmmmm" sounds. It was the most he said all day.

I can't understand why anyone prefers chickpeas to drumsticks, but in deference to the vegan, I had sculpted a small turkey from tofu using colored toothpicks as a tail. I'd brushed it with egg whites and baked it to a golden glow. When I brought it to the table, instead of the appreciation I expected, laughter and name-calling prevailed. Positive reinforcement is damned hard to come by at my house.

Instead of the several different desserts that I might have made had the turkey thawed like it should have, I baked a Mrs. Paul's pumpkin pie and put Cool Whip and M & M's on top, the latter addition another creative surge from the oldest grandson.

There could have been coffee. I cannot say because I seized what was left of the wine, shut myself up in the closet and drank that jug dry. There are many things to be thankful for each year, but having a family is just about the nicest one of all. No matter what.

"Home is where your story begin."