I went to Grandma’s house to decorate Christmas cookies today. Decorating cookies with her is a tradition. She bakes cookies for Easter and Thanksgiving too, but she bakes the most for Christmas. She has lived in her house since 1968. That is 56 years. It was where her children were raised, and it was where I spent summers as a kid. It was never a big house, and I never expected it to be, but it was Grandma’s house.

I pulled into her driveway and turned the car off. I opened the car door and stepped into the cold. It was a quiet afternoon. The wind was not blowing. The sky was grey. Snow had not fallen yet but the ground was near frozen. Nothing out of the ordinary this winter. Peaceful, serene, pleasant, not harsh like the states up north and not warm like the states down south. Just the cold I was used to.

I walked to the side door of her house and opened it. It was unlocked. It always was. It meant the neighborhood kids could stop by and say hello and eat a sandwich. It meant her family had a house to come back to. Before I could even take my shoes and coat off, she stood there in the mud room greeting me smiling. She was wearing a Mickey Mouse Christmas sweater. She loved Mickey.

I gave her a big hug as usual. Grandma was not much bigger than 100 pounds. It was easy to give her a big squeeze. I knew it would make her laugh.

I hung my coat up and took my shoes off. The house was warm and cozy. I followed her into the kitchen. Her kitchen was small. The table and chairs took up most of it, a set her and Grandad bought with their wedding money a long time ago. There were some dirty dishes in the sink. She would wash them later by hand. She never had a dishwasher. It did not seem to bother her.

The table was covered with cookies on cooling racks. Grandma had baked most of them by the time I came over. Decorating was the only part she needed help with. She handled the baking exclusively. She has used the same recipe for 60 years. The same cookie cutters for even longer. Her recipe was one of those little-bit-of-this, little-bit-of-that, the-dough-must-feel-right kind of recipes. Impossible to recreate and unheard of for her to write down.

A few trays of cookies were still in the oven. I sat down in the rocking chair in the living room and waited until the cookies were finished baking. The less people in the kitchen while Grandma was baking, the better. It was one of her quirks. It was also out of respect that I knew my role.

So, I rocked back and forth and waited patiently until she was ready to decorate the cookies. She never failed to mention how much she loved her rocking chair. She held eight grandchildren in that chair. They were my brother and cousins. It was a strong chair made of good wood. It was at least 30 years old.

I looked at the pictures she kept next to the rocking chair. There was a picture of her parents hugging each other and smiling the day I was born. I was their first great-grandchild. It was a special day for them. They celebrated their 50^thanniversary together that year too.

I looked around the living room admiring some of the furniture. Her dad was a carpenter, and his dad was before him. Her dad made the coffee table and shelves. His dad made the lamp in the corner. When Grandma and I drive around the county, she shows me the buildings they worked on and what used to be their favorite hardware stores. These were good men that lived their lives with integrity. I wish I knew them.

Grandad’s obituary sits framed on one of the shelves. He passed away when I was two. Out of his eight grandchildren, he only met me. He fought a combination of throat and lung cancer. A wooden hammer is next to his obituary. He used the hammer in a church play when he portrayed the Roman soldier that crucified Jesus. Members of our church still talk about him, and being his grandchild means something. There are things his grandchildren do and do not do. It is as simple as that. Grandad was 51 when he passed away. I wish I could remember him.

I stood up and walked down the hallway. More pictures hung on the walls, pictures of our distant relatives that emigrated from England, pictures of our pastor and his family, and pictures of Grandma and her brothers when they were kids. A crucifix, Bible verse, and pencil drawing of our little church were on the wall too. Grandma had been a member of our church for over fifty years. One of the six stained glass windows was dedicated to the memory of Grandad and her father. She spent this time of year dressing volunteers for the live nativity scene. Three generations of our family have now learned our faith through that church. It was home.

I heard the timer on the oven beep, and I walked back to the kitchen. Grandma pulled the last batch of cookies out of the oven. She turned the oven off and put the cookies on the cooling racks. It was time to make the frosting. I knew how to do this. It was much simpler than baking the cookies. Powdered sugar, milk, vanilla extract, mix until desired consistency, add food coloring. We will make classic colors like red, green, and white, and then baby blue because it was her mom’s favorite color. But before we started decorating, we needed to turn on some music.

Grandma does not have Wi-fi. She likes simplicity. She does not have a computer, tablet, or a smartphone. She has a trac phone for emergencies and a landline. Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music were unheard of. So, she walked into the living room and turned on her record player. She went through her small collection of records and put on one of Dolly Parton’s Christmas albums. Grandma loved Dolly. She loved her voice and always talked about her faith and charity work. Her and Grandad never made it to Dollywood though.

Grandma came back to the kitchen and with music playing and the frosting made, we were ready to decorate the cookies. She sat down at the table, looked at me and smiled, and picked up a cookie. I looked at her hands. Her skin was paper thin. Her rings were almost too big for her fingers. She looked tired, but she would never admit that she was, and I would never tell her. As far as I knew, she was invincible. A steel magnolia if there ever was one. The matriarch of our family and representation of our faith. I smiled at her and picked up a cookie too, shaking away the worrisome thoughts I had in my head. There will come a time and a place for those thoughts but for now, I was back again at Grandma’s house.

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The featured image is “A Grandmother” (1914) by George Wesley Bellows, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.