It’s taken me about a year to miss Thanksgiving with my family.

I moved to Wisconsin last November, some 700 miles from my folks in West Virginia. My first Thanksgiving alone was, frankly, a relief. I come from a family of loners, so our dinners have all the carefree tranquility of a dozen betta fish stuffed into a drinking cup.

A year later, the novelty’s worn off. Dinner alone is lonely. I miss high-strung relations and excellent potatoes and pot roasts. The phone is about as close as I’m going to get to my folks this year, but I found a few places in Washington County to help out with the rest.

Some churches and senior centers in the community served free Thanksgiving dinners Thursday. I stopped at St. Mary’s Immaculate Conception Church for their community Thanksgiving. This is the first year the church has put together a free Thanksgiving dinner, and they pulled out all the stops. James Jones, the cook at Poplar Inn, helped put together the menu. More than 60 people volunteered to prepare, serve, and clean after the meals, said Mary Kay von Brendel of West Bend, the dinner organizer. Among the volunteers was Daily News reporter Al Dunn, who was taking time away from writing odd stories from the police beat to help out with his family.

For all the extensive preparation and excellent food, only about 30 people showed up. Von Brendel expects more people will attend next year, as word spreads about the dinner. She isn’t a member of St. Mary’s, but she asked the church to host the dinner so people in the city could have a place to eat a free dinner on Thanksgiving.

"I always felt this was something West Bend needed to do," von Brendel said.

It’s a shame more people didn’t come to the dinner at St. Mary’s. On the bright side, the Full Shelf Food Pantry got most of the leftovers. Some of the food had already been opened and couldn’t be donated, so the volunteers urged their guests to take it home with them. A plate full of stuffing, mashed potatoes and green beans and an entire cherry pie leaped into my arms on my way out the door.

My next stop was Slinger St. Paul Lutheran Church for its seventh annual Thanksgiving fellowship dinner. About 125 people came this year, up from last Thanksgiving’s total of 80, said Lois Ghilani of Hartford, who organized the dinner with her husband Mark and other volunteers.

I sat with Sandra Bohn of West Bend, who came in just ahead of me. Neither of us, I learned, had ever been to a community dinner before. While my folks were several states away, health concerns prevented Bohn from fixing a Thanksgiving meal this year. Neither of us knew what to expect from a free dinner.

Not long after we’d gotten our food, volunteer Gilbert Selle of Slinger took a break from preparing food to sit with us. He introduced us to some of the other guests and volunteers. Bohn told me about her work in catering and public speaking, and I told her about what it’s like being an introvert whose job is to talk to strangers. Everyone was friendly, the food was wonderful. Ghilani invited us back next year.

I needed Thanksgiving dinner this year. Family can make the holidays more stressful, but I’ve realized they’re a big part of what makes the holidays important to begin with. I’m glad there are people in Washington County who volunteered to keep Thanksgiving special for people like Bohn and me.