I sat cross-legged on one of the red vinyl and chrome kitchen chairs, watching Mom at the kitchen counter vigorously kneading bread dough. Christmas was next week but I felt like I couldn’t stand the suspense until the big day! I knew better than to complain that time was passing too slowly. Mom’s answer to that was, “Stop wishing your life away!” I stared at the large red and black Stratford State Bank calendar hanging on the side of a cupboard. Some of my nine-year-old classmates at school talked about having their trees up already, but I knew our tree would not be put up until the afternoon of December 24th.
I perked up when the back door slammed. A minute later my 20-year-old brother, Billy, stepped into the house. He was carrying a can of paint. He announced, “I’m going to give the entrance a fresh coat of paint.”
Mom questioned with surprise, “Does it really need a fresh coat of paint?
Grinning, Billy explained, “It could probably wait, but Christmas isn’t Christmas for me unless I can smell fresh paint.”
“How strange”, I thought, “What does paint have to do with Christmas?” I looked forward to things like listening to WDLB, the local radio station. Besides Christmas songs, during the weeks leading up to Christmas, they had a program every evening devoted to someone reading the letters to Santa that children mailed to them. Then, there was my family’s Christmas cookie decorating night, a tradition carried out each year within a week or two of Christmas.
The cookie night had taken place just last evening. When I came home from school yesterday afternoon, the house smelled of freshly baked cookies. Mom had filled a large roaster to overflowing with cut-out cookies. It took Mom, my sisters and I all evening to decorate them. My brothers even decorated a few when they came in from doing barn chores.
Remembering not only the cookies, but Sister Florence’s instructions on how to correctly use the words, “may and can”, I politely requested, “Mom, may I please have a Christmas cookie to eat?”
Life Lines 