The rolling
pin clicks as it glides across the soft dough, smoothing out creases in my mind.
Holding the worn wooden handle, I nimbly guide the dough until it opens wide, becoming
even, circular, shiny, tinged by molasses. With each gentle push, cinnamon,
nutmeg and ginger float into the air, flooding the kitchen with memories. I can
hardly count the years now. Can it possibly be forty?
One
December day in the 1970s (it must have been a cold and snowy Sunday), my friend
Nadine and I decided to make cookies. We were two Jewish girls living in
Toronto in the midst of Holiday Cheer; endless songs of Dasher and Dancer on
the radio, holly wreaths hanging on our neighbours’ front doors, and old
station wagons driving around with Christmas trees hanging from the trunk,
sprinkling the snowy road with a spray of pine needles.
What were
we to do? It would soon be Chanukah. Each year we would carefully arrange our coloured
candles in the menorah until it looked like a box of Crayola crayons. We would
try to sing ‘maoz tzur’ just like we learned it at Hebrew School, but never get
past the first verse. We would eat our latkes with extra globs of apple sauce because
we preferred sweet, and we would play dreidel games with chocolate covered
coins, always gobbling them up before the game was even won.
We needed
something new, sweet and creative: something us.
Each year our
enterprise grew. We made more dough, expanded our cookie cutter collection and accumulated
more interesting decorations. What was once a sheet of cookies soon became a
full-sized operation with the kitchen becoming the rolling room and the dining
room the decorating room.
Decorating
was the real challenge as we wanted each cookie to be different. We had a
collection of shapes for every mood and occasion; fierce Macabis, funny
dreidels, proud shields, and delicate menorahs. We also had snowmen in three
sizes and a star of David.
We met each
year. We snacked on sprinkles and gorged on M&Ms. We talked. We
concentrated on our cookie art and decorated in silence. We talked. We laughed.
We sampled. Nadine took pictures. And our tummies ached.
We met each
year. Nadine got married and one year baby Laura joined us, watching the
operation with interest from her baby seat. I was then married and before we
knew it, we had more company in the kitchen.
We met each
year. Our babies crawled around underfoot, and soon enough, they could stand up
and peer over the counter. They watched, their eyes wide in amazement. At first
they ate. Then they rolled the dough, cut the shapes and decorated cookies.
They even had tummy aches just like us. And when they lost interest, they would
jump around the house together on a sugar high. Alone, Nadine and I would roll,
cut shapes, decorate and talk until the last scrap of dough was used. We would
take pictures and then split our booty. Tired, our clothes whitened by flour, floors
gooey and crispy with errant sprinkles and nuts and licorice, we would sigh, “Well,
there’s another year gone by.”
 |
We met each year until I moved to Israel. That was six Chanukahs ago. Nadine’s girls are off at university and now Nadine bakes alone. My children, being a bit younger, still want to bake gingerbread cookies for Chanukah. We have fun and yes, we all get belly aches and end up with a sticky kitchen floor. Yet I miss Nadine. Our talks. Our silences. Our sighs.
Forty odd years?
And now it is
Chanukah. I carefully press the plastic Magen David shape into the pliant
dough. I am preparing a tray of Star of Davids. I lift the spatula and place
them in the pan in front of my eager decorating crew. Faced with a blank canvas of gingerbread, my
kids are silenced, dreaming up new ways to create their masterpiece. They choose
candies from a colourful palette and sprinkles for brushes; gingerbread
decorating is serious business around here. They laugh, they munch. I marvel how the years
have gone by. I put down my rolling pin and I sigh.
