I may—
Okay, correction: while I
Unlike me, he doesn’t mind shopping for groceries. In fact, when he first proposed, one of the reasons he gave for wanting to get married was that he was tired of buying single-serving packages. I’m perfectly happy to let him be the one who keeps the pantry and freezer stocked, yet there I was that Friday afternoon, roaming the endless aisles, hunting for the stuff we don’t normally keep on hand—confectioners’ sugar, candy dots, little cinnamon red- hots, and a four-pack of food coloring. Ever since they were old enough to dump sugar into flour and use a cutter on the flattened dough, my nieces and I have spent the Saturday before Christmas making fancy cookies together.
As long as I was in the candy aisle, I picked up a package of old-fashioned hard candies for the brilliant-cut glass candy dish Aunt Sister gave us for a wedding gift. Mother had given it to her several Christmases before I was born, “but now that I’ve got the sugar diabetes, I ain’t got no use for it anymore and I thought you might like to have it, honey,” she had told me when I unwrapped it last December.
One way or another, I managed to fill a basket, and as I loaded the groceries in the trunk of my car, Dwight called to say he was running a little late. “Can you pick up Cal?”
“No problem,” I said, but I thought I heard something odd in his voice. “Anything wrong?”
“I’ll tell you about it tonight,” he hedged.
“You
“There by six-thirty,” he promised.
The big round table in the playroom at Kate’s house was littered with bits of lace, satin ribbons, colorful scraps of fabric, and sprinkles of gold and silver glitter. A cake box full of craftsy odds and ends had been upended. While Mary Pat rummaged for a second white feather, little R.W. gnawed on a set of plastic keys and watched the action from his high chair. (I’ve already promised him that I’ll put in a good word with Carolyn when they’re both a little older.)
“You’re just in time to make a tree ornament,” Kate said as she ushered me in.
“So I see,” I said, smiling at the young woman across the table who seemed to be in charge of the scissors.
Erin Gladstone is the live-in nanny that Kate hired when she realized that she was hovering too closely over her variegated brood instead of getting back to work designing the fabrics for which she had made a name for herself in the fashion industry. In addition to Mary Pat, her orphaned young cousin who’s six months older than Cal, there’s Jake, her son from her first marriage, and R.W., her almost one-year-old son with Rob. This past summer, she and Rob obtained legal adoptions for Mary Pat and Jake so that all three kids now have the same last name and the older two can legitimately call them Mom and Dad, something the children had already begun to do before the adoption.
“See my wooden soldier,” Cal said, proudly holding out a peg-type clothespin he had painted blue and topped with a red chenille ball above a tiny face he had inked on with a fine-pointed Sharpie. “It doesn’t need a hanger ’cause his legs will let him sit on a branch.”
He demonstrated on the tree that stood nearby, another artificial one somewhat smaller in scale than the large one out in the living room. This one was decorated with wood and plastic ornaments sturdy enough to survive if a ball crashed into it.
“Look at my angel, Aunt Deborah!” Mary Pat said. Her clothes peg had flowing yellow yarn hair, a tinsel halo, and a robe of white lace.
“How can it be an angel if it doesn’t have wings?” five-year-old Jake asked scornfully.
“It’ll have wings just as soon as I find some more white feathers,” Mary Pat told him, plucking one from the pile
“So what are you making?” I asked Jake.
He had inserted a strip of green cardstock with rounded tips into the slot of the clothespin and was gluing a second one in place above the first so that it looked vaguely like an old biplane.
“A dragonfly,” he told me earnestly. “These are its wings.”
Kate had used red wool to make a skinny Santa Claus with a white cotton beard, and it took me right back to childhood when Portland and I had spent a whole summer making clothespin dolls. My fingers itched to dive in, but I had planned to make a beef stew for supper and I knew I’d lose track of time if I ever took the clothespin Kate held out to me.
“Sorry,” I told her, “but we need to go let Bandit out and get started on supper.” I smiled at Cal. “Bookbag? Jacket?”
While he gathered up his things, Kate said, “Rob and I plan to take the children to the light show over in Garner tomorrow night. Okay if Cal comes?”
“Sure,” I said. “Call me and one of us will run him over.”
Back at the house, Cal helped me carry in the groceries, then took Bandit out for a romp around the yard while I browned chunks of chuck with a large chopped onion. I poured off the excess grease, stirred in some flour until it was nice and brown, then whisked in enough water to cover the meat. When it came to a boil, I dropped in a bay leaf, put the lid on, and turned the heat down low. Once the meat was tender enough, I would add carrots, peas, and potatoes.
By the time Dwight got home and hung his jacket on a peg beside the door, the kitchen was redolent with those homey aromas. I stirred up some dough for dumplings, dropped them onto the surface of the stew, and put the lid back on to let them steam while I set the table and started a load of laundry.
“Erin’s going to take us to Raleigh to see Santa Claus on Monday,” Cal said when we sat down to eat.
“Yeah?” said his dad. “You gonna sit on his lap? Get your picture taken?”
