Dear Mom,
Just finished baking a whole lot of your gingersnap cookies this afternoon, only about the fourth time in ten years that I’ve managed to do any kind of Christmas baking. In the lean years – and by that I mean the years when I haven’t been able to get my act together enough to do more than presents, turkey and tree – I missed the gingersnaps the most. And it felt a bit like I was letting everybody down, although Eldest Son certainly didn’t mind. He might have loved them as much as his siblings had I not eaten my way through an entire bowl of uncooked dough back when I was breast-feeding him. I kept getting interrupted just when I was about to roll and bake them, and the bowl sat in the fridge for a couple of days. Gradually emptying, spoonful by raw spoonful. Poor kid – no wonder he has an aversion to ginger.
But the rest of us love your recipe, which was your mother’s before that. Ginger chews they are really, so long as they’re not left in the oven long enough to crisp. Now the oversized cookie jar is full to the brim, and what wouldn’t fit in there has gone into a Christmas box for the neighbours. I pray that I’ll be able to leave them alone, but the jar is see-through glass and I might have to put it in the basement until Christmas Day, just to get it out of my peripheral vision.
Mom, you’d probably look askance at the tree we’ve got this year. It’s a nice enough little thing, reasonably full and not dropping any needles yet, but the decorations went up in record time and frankly, it shows. Your trees were always beautiful, so artfully arranged, with reflective orbs suspended just so over the lights for maximum effect. I remember the year that Dad got fed up with your tree-trimming instructions (interference, he called it) and, in a fit of uncharacteristic exasperation, took handfuls of tinsel and just threw them at the tree. I was the only person who thought that was funny.
Our tree is a happy medium between perfectionism and random tinsel-tossing although maybe just once, some year when I don’t also have to produce dinner or wrap presents. I’ll decorate a tree all in blue and silver, or red and gold. My kids would be disappointed by such loveliness, though. Many of our best decorations were hand-made by the craftiest woman in the family and even if they don’t shine, they mean a lot to us.
But back to those cookies, Mom. The recipe says that 12 teaspoons of ginger, 8 cups of flour and 1/2 cup each of molasses and golden syrup will make, along with the other essential ingredients, 20 dozen cookies. I only got about 14 out of it, and I didn’t roll them in sugar either. It’s a new world, Mom. People watch their weight now, although the stats say that we’re more overweight than ever. As it is, I’m damn lucky I got Dad’s metabolism, otherwise I’d weigh about three thousand pounds.
Unlike a penchant for sewing, the gift for turning out delicious cakes and cookies didn’t skip a generation. While you were precision itself in the making of blazers and other complex garments, I was of the ‘Make-It-Tonight’ school of tailoring and your granddaughter would be hard pressed to even hem a pair of jeans. She is, however, a baker extraordinaire. Dessert on Christmas Eve will her offering, and if you were here to sup with us, you’d be asking for seconds. Not to be confused with the Eating Contest that seems to have become a tradition among the younger set at Christmas, the appeal of which is utterly lost on me. All I can think of is that Japanese kid who makes a living, revoltingly, out of stuffing himself.
We’ll be about ten around the table tomorrow night, a nearly two-fold increase from the years when you were still with us. Christmas was always too quiet, despite the eight cousins and their progeny who lived within shouting distance. The great divide between you and their mother had a spill-over effect on the rest of us, although the real reason might be the merciless teasing visited on my eight-year-old self by the eldest one. And I always suspected that they liked their other cousins - the ones that weren’t related to me - better. If Dad’s brother hadn’t gone and married your lovely younger sister, I would have had some cousins all to myself too.
The recipe box is a treasure trove of memories, and I have fun looking through it. There’s your ‘Never Fail Pastry’, written in a younger hand, the 60s ‘Festive Mulled Wine’, and the perennial favourite: ‘Rhoda’s Cheese Balls’. Those got made last night and slung in the freezer right away. The only way I can control my appetite for salty, savoury things like that is to put them out of sight and hope they stay out of mind.
You know, Mom, I’m basically an atheist. All that stuff about life-ever-after is just nonsense, if you ask me. When you’re done, you’re done, and whoever is left behind better just get on with it. But still, I find myself talking to you in my head, and wondering if I’m getting through to you. That’s what happened this afternoon, while I was rolling those fourteen dozen cookies. Telling you that, despite the down-market Christmas tree, you’d be pretty pleased to know that I still make your ginger cookies and that I love the fact that the recipe is in your handwriting. I never understood why you thought your writing was messy and childish. It’s perfectly legible and absolutely you. It’s also the last tangible connection I have with you and helped me make-believe that you really were in my kitchen this afternoon, with the sun pouring through the window and carols playing on the radio.
Merry Christmas, Mom. Miss you. Love you.
Your daughter
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