Christmas Tradition

Around the winter holidays, your family has a tradition where you all make sugar cookies at midnight. Around Christmas Eve, your mother, older brother, and little sister all agree on a night to have a cup of caffeinated tea and wait until 11:30 pm. You suggested the idea two years ago to your mother and she liked the idea. She said you always had trouble falling asleep anyway. Your mother prepares the cookie dough the day before and stores the dough in the refrigerator. This allows the dough to thicken and solidify so it can be molded into different shapes. She goes down into the basement to retrieve the tools and toppings. She brings up a heavy basket filled to the rim with rolling pins, sprinkles, frostings, and Christmas cookie cutters.

The animal is positioned as if it could fly, however, the movement is more of a prance. This reindeer is prancing away from the fear of being whipped while pulling the weight of responsibility of all those gifts on its back. The same way your mother stands at the counter, hunched over, but alert. You know that she must be trying to prance away later to see her guy friend at that bar. Or maybe that guy she met at the movies the other night. But your mother knows she must wait until the night is over to be free and escape. You take the reindeer cookie and place it on the tray.

Finally the candy cane cookie cutter displays itself last in line. You know the cookie must be decorated with the classic red and white stripes that swirl infinitely around the pole. You have a vivid and painful memory of the candy cane. It is the same shape of your father’s cane, and sometimes has the red color on it, but more dark. Almost like a liquid. But all you can remember is the bruise that you had to cover up for school today. You take the candy cane and place it on the tray.

You look up at your mother and tell her you are done. She smiles and takes the tray of uncooked cookies from us. She leans over and opens up the blazing oven. After she closes the oven, she looks at you and