It protected people whose names would mean nothing to my family and everything to the wrong government.

And it protected, I understand now, my family themselves, who slept easier for knowing nothing, who got to be safe precisely because they were kept ignorant, and who repaid that safety by deciding I was the disappointment of the family.

I made my peace with it years ago.

You don’t do this work for the recognition; there isn’t any, that’s the point.

But I will admit that standing in that kitchen on Thanksgiving morning, being told to go sleep on a concrete floor by people who thought I was too small and too sad and too broke to do anything but obey — I will admit that some part of me, some tired human part, was almost grateful that the cover was finally, that morning, about to come down.

There was one Thanksgiving, maybe four years back, that I thought about a lot.