Donna Rendine who is cooking for 17 prepares her stuffing early and refrigerates it to cook on Thanksgiving Day.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

As she prepares one of the many pleasures she will present to her family on Thanksgiving Day 2008, Donna Rendine is crying. These tears are not born of emotion, but of the onions she is chopping in the kitchen of her Cranston apartment.

It’s Monday of this holiday week and, depending on the calculation, this is either the second or third day that Donna has been assembling the feast: three days if the shopping is counted, two if just the cooking is. And the cooking is not half over. It will continue through Thanksgiving morning, when the bird encounters a 325-degree oven.

However measured, Donna is delighted with her investment. Even in more certain times, no price can be put on the return.

“What I really enjoy is what it represents,” she says. “It’s family, and it’s a time for everybody to be together. You know, I like to please people. I just feel that I can make all the things that they like and everybody enjoys being with one another.”

The importance of the food cannot be downplayed. On this holiday –– whose roots are in the centuries-old celebration of the harvest, long before Plymouth Pilgrims expressed their gratitude to their Maker –– macaroni and cheese would not do the trick, no matter how happy everyone is to be together.

Good stuffing is essential, and good stuffing requires onions, which can be transformed by heat into sweetness but leave the garden with hostile intent. When cut, onions release enzymes that react with the moisture that bathes the eyes to create sulfuric acid, which stimulates the flow of cleansing tears. Donna dabs her eyes with a tissue and soldiers through. No pain, no yummy stuffing.

She adds the onions to the celery she’s already chopped, places an enormous pan on the stove, lights the gas, melts a half-stick of butter, adds kosher salt and the vegetables, and stirs the mixture with a wooden spoon. Steam rises, bringing more tears, but soon the onions are tamed and a wonderful aroma fills the kitchen. Donna adds hamburger and sausage, then bread crumbs and chicken broth. She transfers the dressing to a bowl, covers it in plastic, and squeezes it into her refrigerator, there to await rewarming. Her refrigerator is chock-full –– and not with leftovers, yet.

A recently retired state social worker, Donna expects almost 20 people for dinner today. Son Chris, 32, will be here with his two children, his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s three children. Son Jeff, 29, and his girlfriend will be here. Donna’s ex-husband. Her sister-in-law and the sister-in-law’s boyfriend. A nephew, the nephew’s girlfriend, and the girlfriend’s son.

This is not the idealized 1950s family, but a real American family today.

Seating will be tight, even with the second table, which requires folding chairs.

“What I tell everyone is: Once they come in and they sit down, that’s it, you can’t get up!” She laughs. “But that’s my family. We’re used to it.”

For more than 20 years, Donna has hosted Thanksgiving dinner.

Before eating, all will have the chance to share a sentiment.

“Usually we go around the table and say what we’re thankful for,” Donna says.

New photographs will be taken, old ones re-viewed.

“That’s an important part of the tradition,” Donna says. Photographs, she says, “always bring a story. ‘Remember this?’ I like to listen to the kids talk because then I know it’s important to them. They have a good sense of family.”

Donna’s 2008 menu includes cheese, crackers, spinach-artichoke dip, chips, antipasto, Italian wedding soup, mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, butternut squash, green-bean casserole (Green Giant, from the can), corn, carrots, rolls, cranberry sauce, and that stuffing (actually two stuffings, the second without meat). And the turkey, in the 24-to-26-pound range, with giblets and gravy.

This year, as before, Donna will brine her turkey, in the process perhaps producing a sequel to a Thanksgiving story. Two years ago, the plastic bag in which she soaked her turkey broke, spilling brine everywhere. Believing she’d learned her lesson, last year she put bird and brine in a Styrofoam cooler. The seams split.

“I had to call my son and he had to come over,” she says. Successful rescue efforts both years averted disaster.

As usual, her sister-in-law’s boyfriend will carve the bird today, shortly after 3 p.m., when Donna calls everyone to the table(s).

“He’s an engineer and let me tell you: it’s perfect. It is the most perfectly carved turkey you ever saw! But it takes him forever. It’s like, ‘Come on! Hurry up!’ ”

Beer and wine will be available, along with Coke, diet Coke and bottled water. Desserts, some made by Donna and some brought by guests, will include pies, Toll House cookie bars and magic cookie bars, a favorite of her grandchildren.

For the moment, the outside world (except, perhaps, for football or a parade) will recede to near non-existence. Psyches will be soothed. This year, as always on this day as winter approaches, it will be OK to indulge –– and over-indulge –– in simple pleasures.

When she planned Thanksgiving 2008, Donna was of course aware of the recession.

“For the most part, I have to say that I’m doing pretty much the same that I have always done,” she says.

“I’m not really eliminating the core parts of the meal. You always find money for that and I probably always will. I would rather do without something else than not be able to put the dinner on the way that I am comfortable.”

gwmiller@projo.com