Breaking the Rules

I’m such a hopeless rule follower. I can’t help it. I come from a long line of school teachers who just instilled it in me. I had no choice but to come under the spell of obedience administered through their no-nonsense teacher voice and the “look” given to me over reading glasses perched so alarmingly low on their noses that they defied the laws of physics. My Grandma Searle was the consummate rule enforcing pro. Not only was she a teacher, but a pianist who often played for the church that my grandfather pastored. I witnessed her turn from her seat at the piano and hush a pew of wiggling, giggling children and never miss a measure of “How Great Thou Art” enough times to know that I didn’t dare move in my seat, no matter how itchy my new dress was.

I was thinking a good bit about my grandparents this Christmas Season. I miss them year round, but the ache always seems a little sharper once the tree is lit and the Lexus commercial starts airing on TV (What’s with that thing anyway???!) This year, I decided to do just a little bit more than visit the memories tucked in my brain. I pulled out some treasured family recipes that had graced our holiday tables in the past. I’m not sure what I was expecting to get out of the whole experience, but the results weren’t quite what I was going for. No matter how carefully I followed the steps, nothing tasted exactly the way I remembered it. I’m positive it’s because I was missing the key ingredient: them.

One recipe did yield a better result, though. That was my Granny Smith’s sugar cookie recipe. Granny was known far and wide for her beautifully decorated cookies and at one point had been featured in a regional magazine highlighting her pre-Pinterest designs.  I remember watching my Granny make those cookies one Christmas in particular. I had come down with chickenpox and was under house arrest until the spots faded. Granny, who was in town on one of her winter-long escapes from her home state of Kansas,  deemed that I was harmless and as long as I stayed in my own little area of the kitchen, I could witness the magic… and… ahem… the secrets to her laborious art. My sweet granny, the one who was so tiny, she had to buy her clothes in the children’s department of Gayfer’s, not only taught me the art of cookie decorating that year, but the art of mild cussing followed by how to properly pour a cold Pabst Blue Ribbon into a glass.  This Christmas, I was all about following her recipe exactly (you know, because of the whole rule follower thing) and realized way too far past the point of no return, that those cookies were a whole lot more work than I had bargained for. Without a second thought, the “secret ingredients” were employed. Granny’s cookies brought a lot of smiles to the faces of those received them and for a very brief period of time, I felt Granny at my side nodding in approval.

I hope that years from now my kids and eventual grandbabies will want to conjure up memories of Christmases past. I pray that I will be able to set aside my “always follow the rules” ways to be real and authentic with them and leave memories that will be seared in their hearts long after I’m gone. And if it involves a recipe that ends with the proper pouring of an ice cold glass of beer, I’m okay with that. But they had better not dream of squirming in church.