Finally, It Looks A LOT Like Christmas

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Our front door even says, Welcome Christmas!

It's TRUE! It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, which for me is a Christmas Miracle in itself. I have to admit to being quite a Grinch over the past few years. What I have not allowed myself to write or speak aloud until now is this:

My mother spent 8 years dying of Breast Cancer. Every Christmas had the underlying, unmentioned feeling that it could be mom's last one. She spent her last 4 Christmases either undergoing or finishing treatments. We nick named it the annual Christmas Chemo like it was a seasonal holiday treat like egg nog. And then she died just before Christmas December 12, 2000. Yup. That was the worst Christmas ever. I spent the whole day in bed in a rental house in Nags Head NC with Steve's family. I got up to get very drunk then I went back to bed. Sad really, but, it was my way of coping. On Boxing Day I woke up and carried on.

The Island of Misfit Toys sit on top of my painting.

Each Christmas has passed since then without it's luster. I believe it was because we didn't have my mother's home cooked meals, our Christmas morning rituals sucked because we were missing our matriarch. We tried to hold fast to them and replicate them. On Christmas morning I didn't look across the room to see my mother in her burgundy velour housecoat, her eyes filled with anticipation as we opened our gifts from her. There was just awkward silence and then my voice making stupid jokes to sever the tension. We tell a few "remember when mom" stories then look at the floor, choke back tears and leave the room.

Our trees graced our wedding table. They make me happy.

The wrapped gifts under our tree came from; Santa, the elves, Mrs. Clause, the birds in the back yard feeder and even from the dog. Her tourtieres were always made with fresh ingredients, she made her crusts cutting out holly leaves and berries to decorate the tops, she woke early to make her stuffing from scratch, we would always have to beg her to stop or hurry up so we could open our gifts. Our stockings were filled with the best things in them and even into adulthood included a toy of some sort. Crumbs were left on window sills and carrots were half eaten in the snow. As kids we never clued in that it was always mom or dad who discovered and brought this wondrous Santa evidence to our attention. These are the things I think of every year. These Christmas memories are my mother.

A girl is never ready to lose her mother no matter how old we are. I found out my mother was sick when I turned 20, she died a month before my 28th birthday. Those are the formative years. When a girl discovers her mother is a person, a woman, not just a mother. It's in that time I wanted to know about what my mother thought, dreamed of and wanted for herself and for my sister and I. I know some of these answers. They are pieced together by what my dad, and my aunts have shared, they help fill the hole that mom's passing has left. But, they aren't her words.

I have been angry that my mother never wrote a letter to my sister and I telling us her thoughts. She never pulled out her Christmas cookie recipes to make sure we had them, she never went wedding dress shopping with us just to make sure she saw us in a dress. Other mother's have done this with their daughters when they new they were terminal. Not ours. I can only surmise that she was optimistic to the end that she would beat her cancer and not have to leave us. I hang onto the fragments of my memories of her. I pause when I come across her hand writing on a birthday card tucked away in her makeup case in my drawer. It used to smell of her but has long since faded away.

The mantel in our dining room.

This is the first Christmas I feel Christmassy. It's because of my little girl. It's because I can now share in the delight my mother and father must have shared in as they readied our house for the arrival of old Saint Nick. It's in every cookie I bake, ever gift I wrap and every little bit of decor I place around the house. It's in Finley's face every time I look at her toothy smile shining up at me from her favorite spot at my feet. Christmas is back! It's here in my house as I take from my mother's ideas and replicate them in a way we do when we take on customs making them our own.

Cookies I baked. Not mom's but Joy's (of cooking)

Finley's little shining face looking up at me. Then the Grinch's heart grew and grew!

A beautiful glass ornament from a new and dear friend hangs in the kitchen.

Finley opens a gift from her Grampy (and his new finace') Grammy.

And so this Christmas marks a new chapter. I'm having my Christmas cry while I write this post. Saying goodbye to the last decade of sorrow and hello to new beginnings. Wondrous new beginnings. As evidence by the signs of Christmas all around my house. The fact that I have allowed myself to write this means only one thing. I am finally healing. I am letting mom go and keeping only the very best parts of our story together. Merry Christmas Mom and thank you.

Mom's Christmas Cookies

There is a holiday tradition among the women in my family to exchange Christmas baking. It is a well anticipated gift as each member has their own very special recipes made only at Christmas. Beautifully presented tins filled with the best and most decadent treats you can imagine. Each year the baking presents it's own challenges and the stories that accompany the cookies are as much a part of the gift as the gift itself.

Story lines have included:
* My mixer broke - the motor finally cacked out. ( Aunt Ann)

* I forgot about making mom's Chinese Chews! (Aunt Dianne)

* Did you see the price of almonds this year? You almost didn't get the almond clusters, then I burnt the first damn batch! (Mom)

* The squirrel broke into the back screened in porch and chewed threw the bag of marshmallows, so, I had to make a special trip to the store just to get more and wait in all the lines again! (Aunt Alice)

* I baked an iced and now you have "tree ornaments" -please don't try to eat them. I refuse to pay for your dental work. (Me)

* I baked Martha Stewart's iced sugar cookies ... they all broke on the flight here. Enjoy your tin of crumbs. (Me)

It seems to me, when I look back at Christmas over the years, the one main stay are all the tins of baking. It is also known that over the years my mother spent a lot of time sick and in and out of hospital for various operations and treatments during the Christmas holiday time. In those times the one thing my sister and I knew would make mom happy was to clean her house and help make her Christmas baking. It's as though normalcy in a tumultuous time could be eased by the familiarity of seeing and tasting a once a year treat. If the cookies were there so were we, okay and intact.

As kids, my sister and I were at each other's throats - a lot. But when we chose to work together we really could accomplish a fair bit. One year mom was in hospital for a lady problem operation - I am thinking it was a precursor to the hysterectomy the following Christmas time. Regardless of what it was, mom was not returning home until quite close to Christmas and she was going to have no strength to bake. Sue and I manage to make a double batch of her peanut butter cookies. We decorated each cookie with a slice of red or green maraschino cherry just like mom always did. We were all of 12 and 10 years of age at the time. We kept our baking a secret so we could surprise her when she returned home.

Our mother passed away just before Christmas and so it really put a damper on our Christmases to follow. The second Christmas without our mother was particularily difficult. Living five hours apart, sister and I were on the telephone, I was directing as Sue wandred around the house looking through the cupboards, cookbooks and recipe boxes trying to located mom's cookie recipes. We were going to work on a few recipes each and bring them home to Christmas. A continuity we greatly needed that year. The recipes were no where to be found. We were both annoyed. The cookie recipes are important! Why did mom not put them aside or make sure we had them before she died? We knew of other mothers who were terminal who wrote lovely letters to their children, took them shopping for wedding dresses and did other important mother daughter activities they would miss out on when the time came. Those mothers handed down heirlooms in articles and recipes, and memories as they wanted their legacy to transcend. Not our mother. She did none of these things? Why didn't she, my sister and I would ask each other. Why? We could only surmise that mom must have thought we knew all of these things without having to be told.

Last summer my dad who was preparing to move out of our family home asked me to go through a few things and take what I wanted as he would be doing a thorough clean out when the time came to move. I sat on the floor in front of my mother 's antique cabinet and began pulling out all her cookbooks. She had bazillions! Lo and behold I found a list scribed in my mother's familiar handwriting. Each of her Christmas cookies was written out along with the corresponding cookbook and page number from which she baked from.





I can only figure they were meant to be found some 7 years after her passing because I was ready to find them. Sometimes I just can't see for looking. Likely, I was so deeply routed in my grief I couldn't see until that day last summer.

This year I baked. I was in my new home, my frst marital home, a bun in my oven, the weather a balmy 71 degrees, the windows wide open. I baked my mother's recipes and a few new ones of my own while Pandora Radio played the same 10 Christmas songs over and over by various artists and I sang along, and for the first time I was not sad.



Mom's Thimble Cookies filled with homemade (not by me) strawberry rhubarb jam.



Mrs. Katinis's (Mom & Dad's first landlord) Cookies - A.K.A Almond Crescents

This year for the first time I am able to share my family's tradition with my new family, gifting them with a tiny tin of baked Christmas treats, thus, injecting a little bit of my familiar Christmas into an otherwise unfamiliar one. A small comforting hold on all my Christmases past as I take a huge leap into all my future Christmases.