We will collect our fresh turkey from the local market and dry-brine it. This means rubbing it inside and out with a concoction of kosher salt and spices and popping it in the refrigerator, uncovered, until Thursday morning. The arid environment of the fridge will help dry out the skin for extra crispness on roasting day.

You probably know this, but brining poultry, or pork, adds flavor to the meat through osmosis. The salt draws moisture out until the muscle tissue calls for some of it back, whereupon the flavor of the brine sneaks in. Neat trick. Kind of a culinary Trojan Horse. With a wet brine, the reverse osmosis pulls in added moisture in addition to flavor. Sounds good, but a wet-brined turkey means a very large pot, full of a brining liquid that has been boiled and cooled, and ample space to accommodate it in the refrigerator.

We are a two-refrigerator family, with a small one in the basement for extra freezer space to store stocks and sauces. Even with the extra space, a wet brine is a commitment of available resources. And it is a bit like cheating, drawing in that extra juiciness. Not to digress, but if you buy a wet-brined product from your butcher, be aware you are paying for the extra weight of that water. Better to make a one-time investment in an instant meat thermometer, check the temperature frequently and don’t overcook the bird. (Be careful of those plastic pop-up, “know-when-it’s-done” things, which will frequently result in an overcooked turkey or chicken. You may already know that, too.)

It will be a smallish group at our table. I think there will be eight of us, one of whom will not have turkey because he is only four months old, and a singular eater. By his presence and that of his 3-year-old brother, however, our small group will be four generations deep, which may top the list of things to be thankful for at Thanksgiving. There is also the bounty of the table, the natural beauty of where we live, our neighbors and friends and the intimate sense of community we enjoy in this discreet corner of New England.

That sense is acute at the moment because I wrote this from Los Angeles, city of almost 4 million angels. We rented a car and in an overt display of our rural conditioning, keep saying, ‘holy cow’ each time Google Maps reveals it is going to take an hour to get to a destination only a dozen or so miles away. In return, we are entertaining the locals by pointing out that the nearest traffic light (merely a flashing light, we stress) is seven miles from the end of our driveway.

But there we were amidst four million people, standing in a long line at a popular breakfast place, when my wife blurted out, “Wait, stop her!” When I didn’t respond, she stepped out of line to hurry after a woman wearing a broad, white hat, whom she recognized as a regular guest at the Hancock Inn over the years we owned it. More than a regular. In 2011, our first summer as innkeepers, she was the sole guest the night Hurricane Irene blew through. The three of us dined in the old tavern as the lights flickered and the storm lashed against the building. It was a sort of shipwreck experience, alone on a desert island, that left behind a special attachment.

Thereafter, for over 10 years, she would stay a night when arriving to open her house on Highland Lake for the season, and stay another at the end, before heading home to California. She was among those by whom we kept track of the seasons, by whom we marked time as innkeepers. And at odds of 4 million to one, we were back at the table with each other for breakfast, admiring the breathtaking view of the Pacific from her porch along the boardwalk of Hermosa Beach, and fending off her generous insistence we bail on the hotel and move into her guest room for the balance of the weekend.

A year-and-a-half after selling the inn, we are asked almost every day if we miss being innkeepers. No, we do not. It is hard to feel wistful for the long hours and seven-day work weeks. But we are thankful for having been innkeepers in many small ways and, sometimes, as you see, in big ones.

May you come together where you are. Against all odds, may the world do likewise. May we be thankful at once, everyone, everywhere, someday.

Jarvis Coffin and his wife Marcia owned New Hampshire’s oldest inn, The Hancock Inn, during which time he wrote a popular newsletter for the inn’s mailing list. Retired from innkeeping, he now writes full-time, mostly essays on rural life and fiction. You can reach him at huntspond@icloud.com, and visit postcard-from-monadnock.ghost.io to keep up with his other musings on the Monadnock region.