Twenty-three people might seem like a crowd to some on Thanksgiving. To me it didn’t seem like nearly enough. As a child I was one of 125 people at our family gathering. Back then, I had so many relatives, we had to move the feast from my grandmother’s farmhouse in Batesville, Ohio, to the nearest county extension hall.
These days we were a much smaller group. We needed only four tables in the hall we’d rented in Belle Valley, Ohio. Most of the family still lived instate. My son Ryan had traveled farthest to get here from South Carolina. I was just a couple of hours away in West Virginia and had insisted on acting as hostess. I
