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Mark your calendar. It's the Christmas Cookie Club! Every year on the first Monday of December, Marnie and her twelve closest girlfriends gather in the evening with batches of beautifully wrapped homemade cookies. Everyone brings a dish, a bottle of wine and their stories. This year, the stories are especially important. Marnie's oldest daughter has a risky pregnancy. Will she find out tonight how that story might end? Jeannie's father is having an affair with her best friend. Who else knew about the betrayal, and how can that be forgiven or forgotten, even among old friends such as these? Rosie's husband doesn't want children, and she has to decide whether that's a deal breaker for the marriage. Taylor's life is in financial freefall. Each woman, each friend has a story to tell, and they are all interwoven, just as their lives are. On this evening, at least, they can feel as a group the impulses of sisterly love and conflict, the passion and hopefulness of a new romance, the betrayal and disillusionment some relationships bring, the joys and fears of motherhood, the agony of losing a child and above all, the love they have for one another. As Marnie says, the Christmas Cookie Club, if it's anything, is a reminder of delight. The Christmas Cookie Club is about the paths Marnie and her friends have taken, the absolute joy they take in life. Ultimately, The Christmas Cookie Club is every woman's story. Celebrating courage and joy in spite of hard times and honoring the importance of women's friendships and the embracing bonds of community, you'll see yourself and some of the ingredients of your own story.
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Prologue
We Gather Every Year
I am the head cookie bitch and this is my party. The Christmas cookie club is always on the first Monday of December. Mark it on your calendar. Twelve of us gather with thirteen dozen cookies wrapped in packages. Homemade, of course. We each bring a dish to pass and a bottle of wine. Sixteen years ago, when we first started, we'd drink the wine and then go dancing. Now we drink some and sit and talk, or put on Al Green and dance at my house. Love and Happiness, that's our favorite. We take turns telling the story of the cookie we have made. Somehow each story is always emblematic of the year. We pass out our packages and donate the thirteenth dozen to our local hospice. We donated cookies from the beginning. The Christmas cookie club is about giving, not just the yummy morsels we share with our girlfriends and our families, but also with people we don't know who are having a bleak time and might appreciate a wrapped sweet.
Because believe me, in the Midwest the depth of winter can be bleak. Gray skies. Cold. What daylight there is often overcast. The bountiful lakes make summer glorious, but hang clouds in the winter. You need to add light and joy. After all, isn't Christmas with its lights, and Chanukah with its candle-flames, about adding illumination to the dark time of year? We need to remind ourselves that the sun will eventually push the night to more reasonable margins. The Christmas cookie club, if it's anything, is a reminder of delight. And, of course, a reminder that girlfriends help each other to endure the grind and to celebrate the joy.
I have rules that have been devised over the years. Just so you know, if you want to form your own party, here they are:
- No chocolate chip cookies. (one year 5 of us made them)
- No bars. (They stick to each other and crumble)
- No plates covered in saran wrap and bows. Just try carrying twelve paper plates wrapped in saran wrap. I used to be a waitress and even I can't do it. Plus, they're too limp to bestow to a charity. The containers have to hold the cookies and make an attractive gift. The added advantage is that we can use the containers later to wrap other presents.
- No more than twelve women in the group. One year, there were fifteen and everyone complained it was too difficult to make sixteen dozen cookies. I never got that three more dozen were such a big deal. But I bowed to peer pressure. The group is only twelve. And we make a baker's dozen cookies. Besides, there's poetry to that.
- You can't miss a year. If you can't come, send your cookies or you forfeit your place. There are other people who want to join the group. This rule resulted from the rule above.
- After five years of coming to the party you have tenure and aren't ever dropped unless you don't bring or send cookies.
- It's always the first Monday in December. Put it on your calendar and count on it.
- Bring copies of the recipe for each one of us.
Jackie falls in love, marries and moves east and stops coming. Donna loves the party but hates making cookies. Janine has an affair with a colleague and divorces and she and her lover move to Benton Harbor. Thus positions open for cookie virgins. So the membership ebbs with the flow of our lives. Right after Thanksgiving, we bake, give delights to each other and the hospice, then pass the dozens of different cookies we've obtained to friends, family, neighbors, babysitters, and manicurists. They treat the guests of other Christmas and Chanukah and Solstice gatherings. A ripple effect of delicious nibbles in the darkest time of year. A ripple in our lives of the joy of each other.
Chapter One
Marnie
Pecan Butter Balls
- 2 cups chopped pecans
- 2 cups flour
- 1 cup melted butter
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1/4 teaspoons salt
- confectioner's sugar
Chop pecans in blender or food processor. Combine all except confectioner's sugar. Gather into a ball. With floured hands, shape in one inch balls and bake on ungreased cookie sheet. I line my cookie sheets with wax paper or parchment paper and spray them with Pam. Bake in 325 degree oven for 20 minutes. Pull off the papers and let cookies cool, but make sure they're still warm and gently shake them in bag with confectioners. Place them back on the paper and add more confectioners while they cool. Makes five dozen.
My dream flutters away as I open my eyes. I stretch my arm out for Jim, but he is gone. Outside, the snow falls in tight crystals, almost like fog. Disney sits laughing beside my bed, his tongue lolling and his tail thumping the carpet. Today is a big and busy day and I had better start it. Reluctantly, I leave the remnants of the dream in the still warm bed and slide on my lavender fleece bathrobe, let Disney out, pour last night's coffee in a cup, and zap it in the microwave. My hands plunge under my armpits for warmth as Disney disappears behind the garage.
I didn't cut back the perennials and now snow clumps in the hollows. Should have mowed the lawn one last time. The microwave tings and I grab the coffee and continue staring absentmindly out the window. Seven A.M. Only four in San Diego. I wonder if Sky is awake. She's supposed to get her results today...sometime this afternoon, her time. During the Christmas cookie party.
Disney bounds from behind the garage, black ears flopping and sits at the sliding glass door. He runs in when I open it and shakes off the snow. "You doing a good job bringing in winter?" I ask him.
He wags his tail.
"Good boy." He has simple answers to all my questions.
I sip my coffee and scan the kitchen and dining room. The cookie party forces me to get decorated for Christmas. Mini bulbs are strung on the tree outside. Chili pepper lights surround my kitchen window. Yesterday I trimmed my tree with the crocheted and macramé ornaments I used to sell at the town's art fair in my hippie days. A few wrapped presents and my collection of Teddy bears cluster around the base. The one that Alex bought Sky for her first birthday lost an eye twenty years ago and Sky knitted him a lopsided red sweater when she was ten. A Steiff Teddy I bought when I was in Germany with Stephen holds his arms open waiting for a hug. Tara's Teddy bear sits in her perfection with a pink dress and tiara. Pretty, but unloved. I plug the tree lights in and it looks like Christmas.
After I turn up the thermostat, I make my bed, straighten the room, and slide on some jeans and a red tee-shirt. Then I tie on my cookie bitch apron, the one Allie had made with the stenciled cookie rules.
At first, the pecans clattering around the Cuisinart sound angry until the nuts are sufficiently broken. This year, Sky and Tara will get an extra dozen of the pecan balls so the recipe is multiplied by three and a half. I put the butter, a pound and a half of it, in a glass container and turn on the microwave. My mother's Kitchen Aid mixer is on the counter. I add in the measures of flour, sugar, vanilla and salt. The microwave dings and I pour in the melted butter and turn on the mixer. While it stirs, I pull out cookie sheets, and reach in the drawer for parchment paper. Then I scrape down the batter into the depths of the bowl and this batch is done. I turn my ipod to my rock play list and Tina Turner wonders what's love got to do with it. Everything, I tell her. But I remember my dream and wonder if I had it because I love Jim or simply because I just want to recapture our great sex. Maybe both. I don't really like that I've fallen so in love with him.
Flour feathers my hands as they roll the balls and I dote on the methodical, rhythmical work. My hands place the morsels in rows of four across the top edge of the sheet. Three dozen on each sheet. The simplicity and beauty of the math, and the routine reminds me of women spinning yarn with a drop spindle, kneading dough, harvesting berries, beading shoes, weaving, or grinding corn. I am connected to those ancient women, and to women around the world as all of us, each of us, make food, clothes, tools for our families, our friends, ourselves. I place one sheet in the oven and start on the next. The easy part is done. For a few minutes I return to the peaceful rolling, and place the sheet in the oven, check the timer. Five more minutes.
I cover the dining room table with sheets of parchment paper, fill a plastic bag with confectioner's sugar, and place potholders in the center of the table. The timer rings. I drag out a sheet and rest it on the table. The cookies are the brown of fall oak leaves, the aroma of cooked pecans fills the room. Seger sings about autumn rushing in and here it is winter. Already. How did it happen so quickly this year? I think about the revolving seasons and the motions we go through during each of them. I start rolling balls for the third sheet. And then slide the loaded parchment from the hot sheet onto the table, put the metal on the stove to cool and gently place the balls in confectioners.
The work must be done quickly, the cookies can't be too cool or the confectioners won't soak in. Too hot and fingers get burned. The second sheet is done and I go into the kitchen to retrieve it.
The phone rings.
I jerk around to reach the receiver lying on the counter next to the empty butter container and hit my cheek on the corner of an open upper cabinet. The door bangs closed, my cheek smarts and the sting spreads.
"Mom?"
"You can't sleep, uh?"
I can't stop working so I cradle the phone to my shoulder while my hands continue adding balls to the sugar bag.
"Nope. Just tossing and turning. Afraid I'd wake up Troy." Sky's voice trembles slightly.
The cookies roll in the sugar. "I wondered if you were sleeping."
"I figured you'd be up making cookies."
"You're right. I just got out the first sheet. I'm shaking them in confectioners now."
"Ah. Nana's pecan balls."
"My favorite."
"Mine, too."
I didn't know that Sky and Troy were trying to get pregnant that first time three years ago. After all, they were both in law school and Sky plans her life to achieve her goals. Bit she called to brag that they had gotten pregnant on the very first try. The way she said it, "We got pregnant on our first try," and then giggled, it sounded almost as if they had never made love before.
I bought fabric to make my first grandchild a quilt, was carrying it into the house, when she called, crying. She had lost the baby.
"Darling. I'm so sorry." My voice fell. "You'll be blue for a few months."
"That's what the doctor said. She said we could try again in six months. This is one helluva period." Sky sniffled and then tried to muster a laugh. "'It's not unusual to have a miscarriage. Especially for the first one,' she said."
"I'll come be with you."
"You don't have to." But her voice lilted with relief.
But then the next year she had a second miscarriage. Again she called to tell me, again I flew out to be with her. "I wish you were closer."
"Me, too."
When she was pregnant the third time, we held our breaths. I tried to wipe the tinge of concern from my voice when we talked. The pregnancy continued. "Maybe I should quit work," she wondered. "But they're monitoring this pregnancy." By the fourth month, I breathed again. Then in the eight month, movement stopped. An ultrasound indicated the baby had died.
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