Christmas Prep

Human Highlighter Suit Tally: 10

I am turning into my mother.  When we were kids, waking our parents early and shooing them as best we could into the living room to open presents, it seemed like an eternity before we could start.  My Dad had to have his coffee.  We would bring the babka I had made into the living room so that there would be something to put in our stomachs during the endless unwrapping.  In our tradition, the youngest person had to fetch the presents from under the tree and deliver them to the correct recipients.  Invariably, Jody—the youngest—would come across gifts that had no tag, no name.  “Who does this go to?” she would ask the assembled.  My mother would furrow her brow and bite her lip, and then give it her best guess.  As often as not, she was wrong.  And then, after everything had been opened, she would study the piles of boxes and get that same thinking look on her face.  “Wait a minute,” she’d say and then dash off to another room, returning with a box or bag she had forgotten.   Sometimes she found things under beds or in closets in the middle of summer; Christmas could be a year-round holiday in our house.

Tonight, after a long day of running around the city doing last minute shopping and errands in the drizzle, I set myself up to wrap gifts on the living room floor.  If memory served, I had stashed most of the booty on the top shelf of my closet.  I stood on a chair, dug through my sweaters, and threw the loot I found down onto the bed. Many of the shops here in Barcelona wrap gifts, and as I took everything out and began to sort it into C.C. and Milo piles, I realized that I had not marked any of the wrapped gifts.  How could I have possibly thought I’d remember what was inside just by looking at the shape of the box?  I began peeling off tape and peeking inside, then having to repair the damaged wrap jobs.  And then, after I thought I had finished, I felt certain that I did not have everything.  So I began a hunt through closets and drawers, finding bags tucked here and there.  It all felt a little too familiar for comfort.

While I wrapped, I began to roll out another batch of cookies—I had made the dough yesterday and refrigerated it.   Cardamom orange sugar cookies.   I thought I’d give some out tomorrow, and bring the rest to Vigo.  They got great reviews, although several reviewers complained about the sticky dough.  Others shared strategies for dealing with it (roll it between two sheets of floured parchment paper).  I am a veteran baker and, if I do say so myself, I am particularly good with dough.  But this stuff was a nightmare.  I managed to roll and cut them, but when they baked, they spread out and puffed up like those fat graffiti letters from the 70s.  Not pretty enough to give away.  But delicious!  Given the late hour, and that there was no longer any urgency, I decided I couldn’t deal with the laborious process of rolling and cutting and baking.  So I stuck the rest of the dough in the freezer and took a bath.