Gingerbread men, in hues that echo the forest upon golden sunrise, adorn the kitchen table.
Gingerbread men in a gingerbread forest, all travelling to a gingerbread house for the sweetest of celebrations. For here they come, the mamas and the papas, the teens and the babes, to dance under gingerbread stars.
The gingerbread house was a hat on a hat, sweets upon icing and icing upon sweets. For a wintry birthday, with a candle on top, it made a great heart-warming cake.
The gingerbread was a whole thing, from the planning of the decorations to the happy festive munching. These little things, these baking projects with their failures and successes, became the best of sepia moments, the kind that imprint themselves as memories.
Making the gingerbread, rolling the dough, stamping in those festive cookie cutters... those are the kind of memories I keep in my album of yesterdays.
Our gingerbread men took a quick skinny-dip in the Italian hot chocolate upon Christmas Eve... one by one until they were sweet memories.
Gingerbread cookies were Ivy's Christmas speciality. The local kids really knew the season was at hand when a box of her cookies arrived for their class. Each one had a slightly crisp texture on the outside, almost like a brownie, and the inside was soft yet more dense than bread or cake. In each little box she put enough copies of her recipe for the class. When the teacher opened the box for the class it was like releasing fairy magic. The sweet fragrance replaced the smell of glue and winter shoes; the heady spice and sweetness took every one of them right back to that time last year when the last box was opened.
Then, when the festive season was over Ivy held a bake sale fundraiser so she could keep donating the following year. For many of the children she met she was simply "the gingerbread lady," and they held her with the same reverence as Santa Claus himself.
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