The scent and sound of a favorite Christmas memory

Ask someone to share their favorite Christmas memory, and they’ll probably tell you about that cherished present they got when they were young. Or the joy in their children’s eyes when they came downstairs to see all the presents beneath the tree. Or the snowy trip into the pines to find the perfect tree to cut down. Something like that.

But for me, it’s cookies.

To be specific, it’s the scent of baking cookies, and the clatter of baking pans from the next room. Three whole days of it.

And I wouldn’t have those cookie memories if I had gotten my way when it came to designing our kitchen twenty years ago when my wife and I had our house built in Huntley.

We had agreed point by point about pretty much everything when it came to what our new house would be like — location, what direction it would face, which model to buy, color of the siding and roof. Everything.

Except when it came to the kitchen.

My wife wanted two ovens. I was against the idea of having more than one.

It was a waste of money, I argued, because how often would we use it? Maybe one or two days a year, at most? And then only to keep a few things warm while the Thanksgiving dinner rolls browned.

We voted, my wife and I, and although it turned out to be a deadlocked 1-1 tie, she won in an electoral college landslide, which was never explained to me clearly.

And so two ovens it was. And because this was twenty years ago, before losers learned to blame imaginary deep-state conspiracies for their losses and pout and whine so adamantly that they threatened to overturn the peace altogether, I shrugged and accepted the decision.

And today I can thank those two ovens for giving me my favorite Christmas memories of all time.

That’s because Mom was a snowbird who spent the winter in Florida, returning to Illinois every Christmas season to spend time with her ever-growing family of grandkids and great-grandkids. And when my wife and I moved into our new Huntley house, Mom decided that she would change her gift-giving policy in a fundamental way.

It was getting harder and harder for her to keep track of what gizmo, gadget or gewgaw each member of her growing brood wanted each year, or even to remember what gizmo, gadget of gewgaw she had given each of them last year. Not to mention the hassle of shopping. And the cost of shipping.

And so, from now on, it would be cookies. For everyone.

And because my wife and I now lived in a new house with two — count ‘em, two! — ovens, our address would now be Mama Kerth’s Christmas Cookie Factory for as long as it took to crank them out by the hundreds. Every year, a few days before Christmas, Mom moved in with us and went to work.

My wife was a willing partner in the enterprise, helping Mom to count them out and put them into tins that had been saved over the years and re-gathered once the cookies had been eaten. “Give me back the tin, if you ever want to see Christmas cookies again,” Mom would tell everybody on Christmas day, in her best kidnap-and-ransom voice.

She kept a list of what kind of cookie each kid, grandkid and great-grandkid liked to eat. There were sugar cookies, and butter cookies, and oatmeal-and-raisin cookies, and snickerdoodles, and chocolate chip cookies — and of course variations of each. I liked the kind of chocolate chip cookie that crumbled when you bit into it, while others liked the chewier kind. Mom knew how to turn that trick by switching between butter and margarine, and who knows how many other sleights of hand.

I volunteered to be quality control on the assembly line for the whole operation. “You don’t want to break a kid’s heart with a misshapen cookie, do you?” I would ask. “Or with one that was just a bit over-baked? You don’t want to lose your grandkids’ love over a lousy cookie, do you?”

I loved Mom too much to let that happen, and was more than willing to eliminate the invalid inventory in a way that wouldn’t overburden the waste-management services.

As I said, my memory of those Christmas cookie days came mostly from the next room, not because I wasn’t willing to help, but because my cookie quality-control standards were so strict and exacting that I found a lot of rejects to deal with. But for some reason, I was sent to supervise mostly from the next room. Go figure.

Ask any member of my family today what their favorite all-time Christmas gift was, and it would be Granny’s cookies. Even the flawed ones that slipped past my thwarted diligence.

Ask me what my favorite Christmas memory of all time is, and it would be standing in the next room, drinking in the scent of hot cookies, to the music of clattering pans and the joyous voices of the two women I loved most in the world.

Mom has been gone now for almost fourteen years, and my wife for almost six. Christmas for me now isn’t at all what it used to be.

But sometimes, a few days before Christmas comes, as I turn out the lights and head for bed, I’ll pause in the dark and imagine that I can hear the faint clatter of baking pans from the next room.

And it never fails to bring a smile to my face, the blessing of my favorite Christmas memory of all time.

TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com.

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