Cookies

Every year, my sisters and their daughters (they each have one) get together with our mother to decorate Christmas cookies. The tradition began when their girls were tiny, but it stems from our collective childhood. Mum baked the holiday shapes and we kids would decorate, occasionally getting the cookies as sticky and glittery as we got ourselves. If Christmas is about memories – and it should be – then painting stars and angels and tannenbaums is among the most cherished of the lot.

This year, I was invited to the party. Naturally, I was late and most of the cookies were already dressed when I arrived. Man, have I got some talented relatives. Elder niece concocted a “carnivorous snowman”, who had just devoured a gingerbread man and was wearing the crumbs to prove it. Younger niece painted the brightest, shiniest toybox train I have ever seen. Wee sis was heavily into the pink sugar, big sis converted a broken bowtie into a dinosaur, and I ... well, novice that I am, I somehow managed to make a jester’s hat out of a reindeer. My bear-wearing-an-iPod bombed, but the flaked almond Christmas tree showed promise—just as the last crumbs were collected and the artists began to disperse.

 

 

 

No matter. In a weekend stuffed to the max with activity, I found proof that the greatest pleasure is in the immediate moment. Ter and I put up the tree (and survived). We met my folks for lunch. We made peppermint bark and worked on a birthday gift for our poet laureate. We watched Jim Carrey as the Grinch. We ate gluten-free pizza and peppermint candy ice cream. I stayed for tea with Big Sis and her hubby after the cookie cache broke up. The weekend was a tangled string of twinkle lights, a hopeless hodgepodge of knots and bumps at first glance, but as I worked along the line, every moment shone as a singularly brilliant star.

I think I’m finally figuring it out. The joy of Christmas lies in taking one moment at a time. I’ve been looking at the mountain from the foothills and feeling defeated before I start. To be appreciated in its entirety, this insanely beautiful/stressful time of year must be taken step by step. Life is supposed to be lived moment by moment. Never is this more critical than during the holidays. It occurred to me, while sitting at my sister’s kitchen table, that the best present I’ll ever get is the one I’m living now.