It’s baking time Under a Red Roof: spritz cookies, pumpkin bars, mint sandwich cookies, sandies, and walnut fudge, yum, yum!  It’s a lot of work, but like the jazz on the hi-fi during it all, there is a certain pleasure and flow in the mixing, rolling, tasting (just a little), and packaging.  It is endlessly satisfying, especially when I think about someone I care about enjoying bite after bite.

It also reminds me of one of my favorite holiday pastimes, reading Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory aloud with the hubster.  It is a magical time when I am transported, via the power of the word, to a place I have never been but know as intimately as my own home.  Buddy and his cousin are there, rolling the wicker buggy with Queenie trotting along side.  We dream, explore, hide our money in a coin purse under the floor boards, and make fruitcakes and high flying kites.  It is the purest form of love.

Just as much as I love the story, I love the act and rhythm of the reading.  The hubster and I sit on the sofa, impossibly close, and I begin, my voice as clear as the sky on that first morning, until it isn’t, and the tears come.  He smiles and wordlessly takes the book from me, taking up where I left off, continuing until the tickles in his throat signal it is my turn again, beginning the cycle over: clear words, tears, exchange, clear words, tears, exchange.  Then it is over, and I marvel at the distance traveled in twenty-nine pages.