There was a time, not so long ago, when a snow flurry would have roused my kids from their bed and sent them into a frenzy of finding boots, gloves, hats and jackets. They would have thrilled at making fresh footprints across the yard, scooping the snow off fences, bushes and trees, throwing snowballs, building a lopsided snowman.
On Saturday morning, as I enjoyed watching our first snow of the season, my youngest got up to go to the bathroom. “Oh, it’s snowing,” then she went back to bed.
I was contemplating how much my kids have grown up on Black Friday when, rather than shopping, we make gingerbread houses. They gathered a few friends and I was ready and waiting for the pandemonium to begin – and nothing happened.
My job during this event is to make frosting and keep a cap on the mess. However, the biggest mess that occurred was when I dropped a huge blob of frosting on the floor as I was trying to put it in the decorating bag. Maybe it was the absence of food coloring this year that made it calmer or maybe they’re just getting older.
I can’t really say I missed the usual chaos, but I was a bit nostalgic for what it used to be. They still laughed, joked around, put mischievous additions on their houses to push my decorating decree “no ninjas, blood or train wrecks” (there was a salmon farm with Swedish fish candy poking out from every available chimney and window, piled in the train and against the house). It was so uneventful for me; I actually went and took a shower.
As I got out of the shower and heard hysterical laughter. I chastised myself for my lapse in judgment to leave a bunch of teen girls alone with frosting and candy. I dressed quickly and rushed out expecting a frosted explosion or the remnants of a candy infused food fight. They were just laughing.
They took their time with their houses, thoughtfully choosing from a huge variety of colorful candies (I get a bit carried away when I buy candy to put on the houses) for decorating accents (salmon), unlike past years when the kids were too impatient to glue the pieces of the house together so dad had to do it and as much candy was eaten as was randomly slapped on the house (okay, the eating candy part is still the same).
I snapped pictures throughout the activity; construction, mid-decorating progress, completion. But besides making frosting, my help was not needed. When I asked them to clean up so I could get a picture of all of them with their creations, they all chipped in, cleared the table and stood, indulging me, for a photo shoot.
It was still fun, just very underwhelming. We’ll continue to have this tradition as long as one of my daughters wants to do it. My youngest and I bake all the pieces together and that’s part of our mother/daughter tradition; working together to complete that arduous task. Every gingerbread building mold is half a house, so for five houses, plus five trains, as we needed this year, we had a lot of baking to do.
Still, it’s worth it in the end. And as I cleaned the last dregs of frosting, the memories from years past flooded in and made me smile. Then I flipped over a kitchen chair to clean off the frosting sticking to its feet. There was a huge splatter of chocolate on the underside of the seat.
Chocolate from our Christmas almond roca making tradition – how many years has that been there? I laughed to myself and put the chair upright without cleaning it off. Memories indeed.
Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. She is still reluctant to clean the memories off the bottom of the chair. You can also read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com or on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh.” Her column is available every week atmaplevalleyreporter.com under the Lifestyles section.
