Up until last year, my mother hosted our extended family for Thanksgiving dinner. She would wake up before dawn on the last Thursday in November to begin decorating and cooking the feast. When I was still a kid, it seemed as though the eight-course meal would just appear out of thin air a few minutes before dinnertime. Only later did I realize how much hard work and timing went into the ordeal.
Now that my mother is entering into old age, I’ve decided to handle the Thanksgiving burden. The first sign that she had passed me the torch came about a week before the meal. I drove over to her house and loaded the heirloom drop leaf table into the bed of my pickup. The table works well for entertaining multiple guests, and it can be converted into a smaller, more intimate table when the ends are dropped.