Like many people, I get a little weepy and nostalgic at this time of year. This morning was one of those times. I found the neatest thing in the grocery store, a "Kit" for making cookies in the shape of candy canes! I was all over that -- easy, right? Not so much, as you can see from the results -- my candy cane cookies look like they've been on steroids...I got a little carried away with the amount of dough. I now have an even greater appreciation for my Aunt Madeline's perfectly shaped candy cane cookies -- made from scratch. Aunt Madeline, the thought of her got me a little weepy, you see she has been gone for a long time. For that matter, so have my Grandmother, my Mom and Dad, and my best Pal Stan -- all people who played a big role in Christmas celebrations of my past... Here's to them and especially to Good Old Aunt Madeline's perfect candy cane cookies. After all, they triggered this reverie -- here's a little remembrance that I wrote a number of years ago. (Maybe it will cause my nieces and nephews (grand nieces and grand nephews too!) to retain a warm memory or two of our many Christmas celebrations together...
I Remember Aunt Madeline
I have to say she was my favorite Aunt (the only Aunt I had who took an interest in me and treated me like I was a person, not a child.). I always thought she was special, from the very early days when she gave me her old costume jewelry (big pink clip-on plastic earrings shaped like feathers with rhinestones) to the more recent times when she would fix my husband and me a tasty lunch when we’d visit her on our way home from the beach.
She had a little telephone desk in the hall of her Cheverly, MD house. She let me sit there when I visited and make phone calls to the Lady that told you the time. She didn’t mind when I lifted the lids of her dusting powder and sniffed all her Avon perfume. At Christmas she made these wonderful cookies shaped like candy canes; she kept them in a huge tin in the hallway closet. I can still taste the peppermint flavoring.
Birds -- yellow and blue parakeets -- were her pets and she loved them. They sat on her finger and she sweet-talked to them. Once we brought our cat to her house, which wasn’t such a good idea. She had an elegant dining room set; it was some kind of dark, highly polished wood with a matching china closet. I didn’t like her chocolate pudding because she made it with nuts. (Although I ate it anyway...). Her house always smelled good and she had lots of flowers and plants and bright colors. Our house was dull, by comparison.
She had a wonderful laugh, similar to my Dad’s. They enjoyed laughing together. I laughed too, when I heard them, even though I didn’t always get the joke. She was a big one for jokes. She had a glass that looked like it was filled with wine. The red liquid moved when you tipped it, but was encased inside the glass. She once pretended to serve this glass of wine to my Mom. As she approached Mom she faked a trip and made my Mom think the wine was about to splash all over her. I thought that was very funny. I got that joke. Sometimes she’d make this terrible scowl; she’d narrow her eyes and purse her lips when Uncle Bertie or Grandma said something she didn’t like. (But, she wasn’t really mad, she just did that to be funny and she was.)
I can see her in front of her house in “Radiant Valley”. I open the gate and run down the steps to where she stood in the front yard. She wore a gold lapel pin (it was the year Lyndon Johnson was running for President), it said “LBJ”. When my Dad asked her if she was for Johnson, she laughed that wicked laugh and said, “LBJ -- Little Bertie Johnson.” For a long time, when I was a kid, I thought my cousin’s name was “Little Birdie” and my Uncle was “Big Birdie”. I thought it had something to do with my Aunt’s love of parakeets. (I figured it out…) Once I sent her the words to a song called “Paddling Madeline Home” and suggested she get Uncle Bertie to sing it to her.
She sent me $10 (big money in 1970...) when I graduated from high school and I can still remember the outfit I bought. She always had the best Christmas cards, purchased from "Miles Kimball" with her name printed inside. When she moved to the Eastern Shore she gave me my Grandma’s old Singer sewing machine. I refinished it and it sits in my kitchen to this day. Later in life, she had little dogs. She loved her dogs, although she was always interested in seeing pictures of my cats. She sent me a black and white stuffed animal that looked just like one of my cats – I still have it.
The last time I saw her, she served one of her wonderful lunches -- fried chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, fresh tomatoes and a pie. She made the best pies. Sometimes she made lemon meringue pies, my favorite. I remember that day, we all laughed, took pictures, talked about old times. On the way home, riding in the back seat of my sister's car, I got stung by a bee. But that’s not the reason I remember that day. It was a good day and now it will always be the last day -- the last day I saw her. We talked sometimes, after that visit. I sent her cards and she always sent me one of her fancy Christmas cards, but I did not see her again before she died. I wish I had, I wish I could have said goodbye.
I'm just saying...
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