Thanksgiving 1978
My fondest memories of my childhood Thanksgivings took place at our house in Mentor, Ohio. It was an old, white colonial-style home with black shutters and two giant trees that stood, like sentinels, in the front yard. The house’s claim to fame was that it once belonged to President Garfield’s great-grandson. Thanksgiving always took place in the formal dining room, with its creamy damask wallpaper, built-in china cabinets, and a large, crystal chandelier glittering over a table carefully set by my mother. Her Avon red glass plates and goblets and white, grocery store, wedding china took on a new elegance in that beautiful room. A large picture window filled the wall behind my father, sometimes framing a snowy landscape. As the sky darkened, our gathering would be reflected in that window. The door to the screened-in porch was in the wall on one side of the room, closed tightly against the drafts that poured from it despite the fact that the storm windows had replaced the scree
