Food for the Angels

My career counterpart and her husband came over to visit us yesterday.  We successfully kept our "work days" back stage the whole time they were here.  Instead, we reminisced and laughed about the silly stuff we did when we were kids.

Each year her mother started baking Christmas sugar cookies the first of November.  She'd bake one batch at a time, pack 'em up, and put them in the freezer.  The kids knew what she was doing, so when she wasn't around, they'd open the freezer, help themselves and re-seal the container.  She remembers being thankful her Dad was in the house the day her Mom first discovered she had no cookies for Christmas!

We laughed about how she and her siblings dared put their hands up inside a freshly baked angel food cake that was cooling upside down on a pop bottle.  By the time their mother came back to turn the cake pan right side up, she found her prized angel food cake had been torn apart and already eaten by the gang of imps she herself brought into the world.

My friend distinctly remembers her Dad repeatedly telling his wife, "Let the kids have it.  Why bake the really good stuff only when company comes!"   

That's how it was when we were growing up.  Our Moms prepared their best recipes and used their good dishes, silverware, and tablecloths only when someone would come over for a meal.   We girls learned from our Moms to "save the good stuff," and here we are now the joyless keepers of unused heirlooms that mean absolutely nothing to our kids. 

Our visit yesterday convinced me to start using the embalmed pieces of the past that are buried in the attic.  It can't ever be too late to breathe new life into that which has grown old, can it?