Christmas cookies, loss, fondness, self-esteem, and unexpected gestures

Exactly a year to the day after I began last year's making of Christmas cookies, I have begun to make the Christmas cookies for this year. It's prompting me to examine the phenomenon of Christmas-cookie-making in my life.

Background: my grandmother, whom I loved beyond words, was a domestic Valkyrie. Martha bloody Stewart had nothing on my grandma (particularly because Grandma did all her house magic out of love, not ostentation or desire for wealth). In all my efforts to create a calm, kind, and welcoming home, I hold myself to the standard my grandma set. It's a memorial of sorts, and part of my personal quest for excellence (with the unfortunate addendum that the quest is not always the finding).

Each year Grandma made a half-dozen (or more) different kinds of cookies for Christmas. Once or twice in a decade, she would try a new recipe, and it would get incorporated into the family traditions (or not, if it wasn't quite as tasty as some of our favorites). My brother and I were taught at a very early age how to ice the sugar cookies and draw outlines and faces on the gingerbread people with these really cool icing-squirter things Grandma had. As we grew, we were entrusted with rolling and cutting and dropping blobs onto baking sheets. Eventually, we were allowed near the heat source. (My mom, having no interest in kitchen matters whatsoever, was happy to let these skills skip a generation.)

Exactly a year ago, I began the cookie process only to find — to my horror — that through chronic neglect all my cookie cutters had disintegrated into rusty grit. This was humiliating. I had gone so many Christmases without making cookies that my own cookie cutters had risen up in judgment against me and expired in despair. I posted a wailing blog entry to this effect.

Two weeks (or so) later, we were visiting some of my very first, and most treasured, Australian friends as part of our holiday festivities. That's when Carolyne, with a half-smile, handed me my Christmas present: a set of cookie cutters (some copper, some stainless, all rust-resistant). And I hadn't even known she read my blog! That's the unexpected gesture, which warmed my heart and, now that cookie season is here again, gives me the chance to keep up a family tradition, honor my grandmother, and make lots of cookies to offer to family and friends (and myself).