A Reunion.

I put an ad on Craigslist once to find someone to spend Thanksgiving with me. I asked for overbearing women around age fifty, younger if theatrical makeup was employed. The pay was nothing, but I said I'd furnish her with an appropriately heinous lamé patterened sweater and all the pots in the kitchen she had use for.

Fathers had a height requirement. I said I preferred beards but since I've always been a daddy's girl, I forgave the applicants that emailed me photos of themselves with handlebar moustaches, or the fourteen year olds that stood there in cartoon ties, whose cheeks were so smooth they clearly hadn't gone through puberty yet.

We needed at least two sisters, and I wanted them to be sisters in real life, but I would cast anyone provided that there was sufficient dramatic tension between them over a shared ex-boyfriend or something to that effect. "During dinner," I wrote, "one of you can even throw a glass of wine in my face and storm off to buy cigarettes. After we've forgiven eachother, we'll hug eachother on the couch and watch Romy and Michelle's."

I didn't want any brothers, but I got a pleading letter from a man who had only been out of the shelter for a month, so I hired him and one of the smaller blond sister-applicants to play his new wife.

I avoided boyfriend applicants for myself to minimize the perverts, though I wanted one desperately. And even though no one wanted to be my grandfather, (I have to say I took this personally), the family photo turned out great; I put the dog in the empty chair, in a tie, and when the automatic flash blinked on, even he smiled.

And while not everyone stayed the whole time, and we had to prop up a stuffed cat in our mother's chair to stand in when she ran out crying and called us all whores--even so, I will never regret this. For at least a moment, we sat down together, and said the world "grace" out loud and were none of us ashamed.