A Recipe for Christmas Magic

Hanging on my kitchen wall is a handwritten recipe for chili sauce. I've never made this recipe, nor have I eaten this sauce. I found the recipe scrawled on and old slip of office stationary. The heading reads Pacific Elevator Company, Kansas City, Missouri. It fell out of an old cookbook I was looking through with my Auntie M one day.

I love old cookbooks. The terminology and techniques fascinate me. For example, this particular chili sauce recipe calls for "eight teacups of good vinegar".

So when my Auntie M decided we must have a Christmas cookie backing day this year, I scoured my old cookbooks. No way was I gonna grab pre-fab, refrigerated cookie dough from the grocery store. But I wasn't looking for something printed in those cookbooks. I was looking for a handwritten index card I had used as a bookmark for decades. If I could only remember in what book.

After nearly a half-hour, I found it. The Dieker vanilla wafer recipe.  Mr. Dieker was my fourth grade math teacher. His wife was this lovely woman whose house I remember was always filled with something good to eat and a lot of laughter. Their children were living, breathing recreations of every sweet-faced, blonde-haired cherub painted on old-fashioned Christmas cards or Gerber baby food ads. I remember summers at the swimming pool with them and snapping green beans and sucking on strawberries from a big garden we helped plant in their backyard. And I remember those sugar cookies.

Yesterday, my Auntie M arrived with festive aprons and a basket full of Christmas shaped cookie cutters. She opened a sparkly tin to reveal a dozen different kinds of sprinkles and toppings and edible glitter. I rolled out the Dieker dough. My kids, home from college, slipped into baker mode, and for the next six hours we cut and baked and frosted and decorated and sang and laughed.

As I mixed up a second batch, I marveled that there must be something magic in that dough, for I was transported back forty years to a snowy day in a small town where a little girl rolled up a giant ball of snow to make the bottom of a six-foot tall snowman that would have its picture in the paper the next day. I fell back to a Christmas eve when Santa, himself, knocked on our door and delivered our most desired toys right into our hands. Then, in a flash, it was Christmas morning and my little ones (whose college versions now joked over whose gingerbread man most resembled a muddy alien) chased their Jesse and Woody dolls around the living room. At the end of the day, we had created this beautiful mess and mess of merry memories, too. In my mind, the laughter and stories and disasters and secrets we shared with Auntie M around a table full of Christmas cookies emblazoned their love right into that faded little index card.


Yes, there is something magical about an old recipe. The terminology and techniques are quaint and quirky, but woven into the handwritten instructions is a secret code.

I've often wondered about that old chili sauce recipe--the one that calls for "a heaping peck of large, round tomatoes" and "one grated nutmeg". What special occasions and traditions happened around this pot of chili sauce? It's code will never be deciphered. It will remain a fun mystery hanging on my kitchen wall. The amazing magic in the Dieker Dough, however, has been revealed. I've promised myself to keep it that way.

In fact, I've done some digging. Dieker Dough isn't the only magic card in my kitchen. It seems I've got a whole deck. Watergate cake. Peanut Butter Pie, Grandpa's Steak Stew. Aunt Polly's Pink Champagne Punch. I have a feeling 2019 will have us picking a card, any card. I can't wait to see the magic unfold.

Parenting the Uni-mind

It’s completely my fault. They remind me constantly it’s how I raised them. 

They look like a couple of normal college kids, right?

Don’t let the image fool you. I’m pretty sure they have the skills to serve as top-secret espionagers.

Before my empty-nester days, I prided myself in knowing all the details of the secret lives of my four kids. Then two of them went off to college, and I felt more out-numbered by this younger duo than I did with all four. These two could get their story straight with barely a glimpse across the room. We call them…the uni—mind.

My empty nest has done nothing to diminish the outnumbered feeling. In fact, now that they are young adults living three hours away, the cahoots they’re in involves more than staying out after curfew or which one stole my secret Little Debbies stash. Now it includes covering up adult things—like surgery.

One innocent Thursday, I expected my two college kids home sometime in the evening. Instead, I received a call admitting a change in plans. “I won’t be home tonight, mom, because I’m having surgery in the morning.” What’s more, she didn’t need me to come. That would just be weird.

Uh…what?

It was a minor procedure to remove a small bone chip in her knee that had been bothering her for some time. I knew about the chip. I didn’t know about the surgery. Still, this Roaring Mom had a major freak-out. My son, at nineteen years old, would be going with her to check her out after and drive her home. Everything was taken care—except the huge taffy-pull on my heart that happens when your kids no longer need you for stuff that you need them to need you for.

I had a way around it, though. I called my son, one-hundred percent certain he wouldn’t want the responsibility. The call went something like this:

ME: So, what’s the plan tomorrow morning?

HIM: What plan?

ME: I need you to tell me what’s happening tomorrow.

HIM: (Hesitantly) I don’t know. What do you think is happening tomorrow?

It went on like this for five minutes.

The loyalty of the uni-mind is strong. Not even the I-gave-birth-to-you could crack it.

Apparently, however, what had worked (maybe too well) was my daily repeated mantra from their childhood: You-guys-were-born-16 months-apart-on-purpose-so-you-could-keep-each-other-entertained-so-go-play.

I’m continually blamed for their independence and strong will and opinionated voice. “You told us to be true to ourselves. You told us to be independent. You told us not to make decisions based on what other people think.”

It is mindboggling, satisfying and terrifying to watch them grow up. The surgery went fine, and I survived not being there for it. So, if this bit of adulting is my fault, I’ll take the blame.

But moms, even when they no longer need us for what we need them to need us for, we shouldn’t let go too much.  In the midst of my freak-out and my son’s assurance that they “got this”, he paused just long enough to let me know he’ll always need me for something.

                HIM: You should be proud that we are mature and responsible enough to handle this. Oh, and while I have you on the phone, can get twenty bucks for a haircut?

Roaring Mom Win! I think I set a speed record on Square Cash.

You know, if he’d been really smart, he would have asked for fifty right then.

Guess my work isn’t done after all.

The Blame for What's Wrong With America

Read carefully the following words. All of these comments were made within the last few months by teenagers in a school with a mostly white student body.

If I were sitting in a room full of ____________ and didn’t know them, I would be scared.

All that is wrong with our country right now can be blamed on ______________.

I was sitting in class, and they were talking about some awful part of our history and someone asked, “And whose fault is this?” Everyone answered, __________________. I was practically the only _________________ in the class. I felt so uncomfortable and awkward.

__________________ have had all the privilege and the power for so long, it’s someone else’s turn. We should just eliminate all of them. Yes, the world would be a much better place if all the ____________ were gone.

Fill in the blanks with the word or group of words you think were originally used.

Did you write in the word blacks? Did you write in gays? How about Jews?

Go ahead. Reread the comments and fill in the blanks with those words. Does it scare you? Are you concerned at all at the casual communications of our youth? I hope it scares you. It should.

Now, let me tell you the actual words originally used in the comments.

If I were sitting in a room full of straight, white males and didn’t know them, I would be scared.

All that is wrong with our country right now can be blamed on the straight white male.

I was sitting in class, and they were talking about some awful part of our history and someone asked, “And whose fault is this?” Everyone answered, the straight, white male. I was practically the only straight, white male in the class. I felt so uncomfortable and awkward.

Straight, white men have had all the privilege and the power for so long, it’s someone else’s turn. We should just eliminate all of them. Yes, the world would be a much better place if all the straight, white men were gone.

That last comment was said in jest, but I’m not sure it matters. Or maybe it does. Maybe the fact that we can casually joke about exterminating an entire race-based gender should matter a lot more than it does. Maybe that’s the problem.