Old Knudsen has suggested we write about some of our choice Christmas experiences-- I've already done that . So instead, I will tell you all about a memorable Thanksgiving. My husband and I had been married about five months and were living in New Jersey. We couldn't afford a trip back to the Midwest where the rest of our family would be celebrating, so we decided to stay put. We knew a woman who was exceptionally generous, sometimes just because she wanted something and sometimes just because. She tended to collect strays, you could say, and assembled this bunch for Thanksgiving dinner like I have never seen. I hadn't learned to cook yet, so I was given the job of potato pealing. There we were, two very young newlyweds; the woman and her four children; her Italian- emigrant mother who had the typical Italian/NJ accent; a newly divorced and very fractured woman with her three little children; two Cuban emigrants , a sister who had escaped Cuba via Paris and later retrieve...