I ate lukewarm Thai food for Thanksgiving. The original plan was to fly home to Los Angeles -- a place I haven't lived in since the '90s but will always refer to as "home." Expedia.com, however, made it painfully obvious that eating for one day would replace eating for the rest of the month. So a fiscally responsible decision was made. Choosing funds over family was never such a fail.

To backtrack a bit, I haven't had turkey in my grandmother's house since 1998. Thanksgiving is the hangnail of my holiday season. Better just to leave it alone until professionals can get the job done.

For more than a decade during my self-imposed East Coast exile, I've chucked Andrews-family tradition in favor of takeout food, cheesy movies or cocktails -- lots and lots of cocktails. This year, though, something changed. Dice started rolling in my head to a concrete craps game I never started.

My grandmother, a woman I've never seen cry (unless Ghost is on) or cough (unless chain-smoking), has been sick. The "big C" is a silent but deadly relative in our family, like a crazy uncle locked up in the attic. She left me two voice mails a month ago to "please call," and when I did in a panic, all she wanted to do was chat.

After a roller-coaster relationship defined by stops and starts and her telling me once that "life is no plaything," finally, we've become good friends. Being away for just one holiday suddenly felt like cheating instead of saving. I told her I'd definitely come, before checking with my checking account. Christmas. Christmas would have to work. And the dice kept rolling.

As much as I hate to admit it -- because I'm "i.n.d.e.p.e.n.d.e.n.t. do you know what that means?" -- the Andrews family is my dirt. And I mean dirt as in my earth, my ground, my real estate, my road. It is the "start" to every path I set out on as the years moonwalk in my rearview mirror like so many road signs. I've made peace with that fact. Without Los Angeles, Manchester and Normandie, Grandmommy's house and the nickname "Lena," I'd be "lost in the world." Like Kanye.