This is how we love each other
There should always be homemade Chex mix on the counter, in a twenty year old Tupperware dish.
Also, there should be my 94-year-old grandmother Deenie’s peanut patties (dyed red with food coloring, made with corn syrup) available to all.
Speaking of red food coloring, I have to mention Mom’s chocolate chip meringue cookies. (Sometimes they’re also dyed green.)
The night before Christmas Eve my dad will make the pies. He is the official family pie maker because his dad taught him that real men should not only be able to fix a leaky pipe and change the oil in a car, they should also play a stringed instrument and bake a good loaf of bread. (My dad hasn’t figured out the bread part yet, but his pies are fierce. And his fix-it skills and violin accomplishments are pretty fantastic.) I love the sight of my dad at the counter with his pies and my sister in law peeling the apples at the kitchen table—one long curl.
Creamy potato soup on Christmas Eve.
Christmas morning: banana bread, coffee, my mom and Deenie and Aunt Vicki around the table in the 7 am morning darkness, waiting for the kids to find their stockings.
Deenie has always made the gravy just the way her mama taught her on the West Texas farm of her childhood. She oversees my mother at the stove.
. . .
Today I’m at Grace Table, thinking about my family rituals and why I choose to keep carting my kids to Texas at Christmas.