Update: Where Have I Been?

Just in case anyone's wondering, I'm still alive. My parents have needed a lot of help since the beginning of April. Dad was hospitalized from April 1 through the 18th. I've basically been helping them almost every day since then. Paul was in Missouri for six weeks to help. Neither of us could have gotten through these few months alone. I'm flat-out exhausted. Hopefully they are in a place, now, where they don't need me to care for them on a daily basis. There is still a load of work to do. Now that my shoulder's good and messed up, and all the joints and muscles in my legs, arms, and back ache, no more furniture needs to be moved. (Good, but not surprising timing, there.) But there's a lot of administrative work to do, financial, logistical, healthcare, etc.

I haven't been able to get billable hours, to speak of, for this whole time. So naturally, no time to blog. And I'm not ready for any kind of Jar of Goodness crap.

Except . . .

For all of those who helped me, and helped us, and helped my parents, these past months. Far too many to mention right now.

I don't have the time for gratitude now. I shouldn't even be writing this now, because I need to WORK. And I need to mow the lawn before it rains again. And so much more I need to do. I need to make dinner. The beat goes on.

In closing (for now), here's a gratuitous picture of Brenda sleeping on the sunporch. Gggggghhh.

P.S. Oh yeah, we still need to take down those storm windows and put up the screens . . . so much for my sore shoulder . . .

Jar of Goodness 1.5.25 B: New Mailbox, Just in Time

At the risk of possibly using up my next-week's thing to feel grateful for, I'm going to double-up and post two gratitudes in a single day. Hopefully there will be something else to be grateful for by next Sunday. Right?

Here's JOG 1.5.25 "B": I'm glad we got Dad and Mom's new mailbox installed (and without any hitches!!!) on Friday afternoon. Sue and I prepared hard for it: make sure we have all the tools we'll need, all the hardware, a board to raise the bracket above the railing where we'd be installing it (so the flap would open), and what-all. Because, you know, these kinds of "simple" things often turn into some kind of production, another trip to the hardware store, whatever. But our preparation was perfect! How about that!

I'd been trying to get my dad set up with the Post Office for door delivery for over a year, but apparently the stars have to align, and you need to be Sherlock Holmes in order to discover the correct procedure for applying for this service. Like, don't bother looking online; just start by asking the letter carrier who comes near your home each day. The stuff online is contradictory, and half of it is hidden in the USPS's puzzle-like website.

Anyway, we got the doctor's letter, I found the official form, I filled it out a few different ways, Dad signed it and a letter I'd composed officially requesting the service, I printed out a satellite view of their house, driveway, street, and current mailbox location (marked with distance my Dad has to walk), and in early November I hand-delivered it all to the cryptic, non-public USPS distribution station (because, of course, you can't mail them the form), and just a month or two later, I discover they've been approved. (The only hitch was that a month ago, they'd called my parents and left them a message saying it was approved, so naturally I didn't get that information.) But I called them to follow up, learned it was approved, so it was time to install the new mailbox by my parents' door.

And just in the nick of time! This snow and ice storm is gnarly, especially since it'll be followed by at least a week of super-cold temperatures. Thank goodness my dad won't be staggering through ice and snow on his concrete sidewalk and steps, long gravel driveway, and the icy road. (Columbia is horrible about clearing any of its roads, much less ones in neighborhoods.) Because yes, elderly people still really do rely on postal mail to get their printed newspapers from their former hometowns, their printed magazines, their tons of printed direct-mail catalogs, their bills, their correspondence, their junk mail, their coupons, and all manner of non-television entertainments.

So anyway, whew, there we go. And their letter carrier saw it as we were installing it and approves of its location, and everything. He'd been notified of their door-delivery status and had already started delivering to their door. Hooray!

Jar of goodness . . . mailbox of happiness.

Changes

The first snow of the winter of 2024–2025 came today.

I awakened at five and sensed something was wrong. As I grew more conscious, I realized I was smelling smoke. That’s never a good thing, unless you’re sitting near a campfire, or burning incense. And it was ugly-smelling smoke—not the pretty scent of someone’s fireplace or woodstove, wafting in the chilly air. No. It smelled like plastic, vinyl—acrid—nothing anyone should be burning, although we’ve had our share of neighbors who burn their trash in their backyards, in the early hours of the morning, trusting that no one will care about the smoldering dioxins and other toxins they inhale while asleep. Most of our neighbors smoke, anyway, so how would they even notice it?

But I was concerned. I tiptoed around our chilly house in my bare feet, making sure that all rooms on all floors were free of an obvious problem. I mean, we do have smoke detectors, but . . . Then I stepped onto the sunporch, which was colder still, and the attached “screen” porch (now with storm windows, of course, but still fairly open to the outdoor air, since we haven’t yet chinked the windows with insulation). And the smoke odor out there was much stronger. I moved back indoors and down the stairs to the front door, and stuck my face outside: again, smoky. Ugh. Whew.

This information led to another round of the second and third floors, this time with my glasses on, squinting more carefully out the windows. Is one of our neighbors’ houses on fire, or billowing smoke? Or is someone actually burning trash covertly? If the latter, I knew the fire might already be done with, even though the heavy, still air can let the stench linger for hours after the deed. But all I saw was a diffuse haziness in the direction of the motel on the expressway. (Hmm. And we need to clean our windows. Kind of late in the season for that, now.) Somehow, I managed not to awaken Sue with all this traipsing around at 5 a.m. (I also managed not to stub my toes on anything. Huzzah!)

Well, it turned out that around 2:45 a house had blown up on the east side of town. They haven’t yet announced a cause, but my money’s on a natural gas appliance or exhaust malfunction, possibly combined with electric space heaters or some such. It’s the first time this season that people’s heaters are running full-bore, and heating systems in poor repair are getting their dangerous shakedown this weekend. Yeah, while everyone’s observing Thanksgiving and Black Friday, and all that. Happy holidays.

And yes, if you know me, you know I’m too appalled about the results of the presidential election to feel very “thankful” this year. I live in a red state that was a purple state not long ago, before a Republican supermajority and gerrymandering, and toxic fundamentalist misinformation bubbles. I’m literally surrounded and ruled over by crazy, het, right-wing Trump-Jesus-gun worshippers. . . . And Thanksgiving? Are you kidding me?

Also, my parents are a grim situation all by themselves: it’s the inevitable collision between my mom’s unbending and increasingly unrealistic notion that she and Dad can continue forever to live in their home, with its staircases, and Dad’s flat-out exhaustion and increasing disability. He is her caregiver: he staggers and stumbles around their house; he fixes all her meals and carries them to her on a platter, brings her beverages and begs her to drink them, launders her clothes and bed sheets, supplies her with Depends and Poise pads, dispenses and tracks her (and his) medications, deals with all the house upkeep, pays the bills, everything. He exercises, does PT, walks, to stay in shape (“to keep myself physically fit . . .”). As she has for years, she sits in her puffy recliner and does nothing, not even the tiny amount of walking the doctors have been telling her for years that she must do if she wants to stay at home . . . and he’s simply exhausted. And so am I.

In retrospect, my brother and I should have talked them into moving a decade ago, and if they’d done nothing, at that time, we should have done it for them then. Too late for that now.

Mom, psychologically increasingly like a toddler, expects me to quit my job and move in with them until they both are gone, which, given my mom’s genetics and lack of serious chronic illness, could be another decade, in her case. Well, actually, I don’t think she knows I have a job, because I’ve been so generous with my time with them. As a freelancer, I’ve been able to skip some hours of work in the past five years to drive them to their haircuts and doctors’ appointments, to pick up groceries, computer supplies, and what-not, but those demands have exploded in the past few years, with Mom being taken to the hospital, often with rehab, six times in the past two years, and Dad twice.

Dad had a stroke, and he needed outpatient PT after it, and he needed me to drive him there a few times a week. And there’s always the questions about the computer. Or, Why isn’t the phone working? Or, I think we might need a new water heater. Your Mom needs more Depends: this size, overnight, super absorbency. . . .

Wash, rinse, repeat. I know Dad remembers I have a job, but I’m pretty sure Mom doesn’t realize it—or if she does, she doesn’t respect it.

Talk about pushing my buttons. I try to just see it, acknowledge it, know that it’s old, old material, breathe, and move on without, like, yelling. Of course I’m not respected. And I don’t need her validation anymore.

When I tell her she can’t expect me to come take care of them at their house 24/7 for the next decade or so, she tells me that she and Dad will simply have an elevator added to their house, or they will just hire 24-hour in-home assistance. I recently sketched out the math for her: $30 an hour, times 24 hours in a day, is $720 a day; multiply that by 365 days in a year, and you’re paying $262,800 annually just for someone (some person or persons—who?) to be there to help you, in a home that’s not going to accommodate a wheelchair, which she will soon need to be in—it does not count food or food preparation, transportation, incontinence supplies, heating and cooling bills, water, house maintenance and property taxes, medical copays and drug costs, and the ever-loving cable TV and landline/internet bills. It’s just fantasyland.

In our family, the dynamic has always been to go along with Mom’s ideas, because she’s always been “the practical one.” The one good with finances. The one who takes care of the house, the bills, the do list. Balances the checkbooks. (Kind of like the myth about Republicans being good about the economy.) She was always the one to deal with the plumbers, electricians, and handymen. She used to be sharp as a tack, “on top of” everything. But those days are long gone, as she becomes more confused and lives increasingly in the past. Actually, they both are.

So it’s past time for independent living; it may already be too late for assisted living, for Mom. She’s hurtling toward skilled nursing; she doesn’t want to drink, so she gets dehydrated and gets UTIs, she doesn’t move around, she’s weak, her blood pressure tanks when she merely stands up. The idea of getting her up the staircases is a horror for me. She’s been hospitalized three times in the past six months. But she still expects us to treat her as if she knows best, and we all still tend to twirl around trying to make her happy. Of course, that is impossible. People like her will never be happy; this is how ninety years of untreated depression and anxiety disorder, with a little side order of NPD, ends up. And so we are moving ahead with plans for senior living for them both. Dad is ready. We simply leave her out of our conversations, which is easy to do since she only ever sits in her living room chair and has grown pretty hard of hearing.

So we’re in a race to get them moved into a good place where they can be safe, clean, fed, comfortable and hopefully find things to be happy about, to be entertained with; to have people to talk with; to maybe even find ways to still contribute to the world (Dad would like that, I think).

You know, I started this blog in a state of deep stress and depression. Hopelessness. Things that used to cheer me only made me feel like I’d been slapped. I was repeatedly contemplating suicide. I thought that starting a blog about the things—the few little things—that I can unequivocally claim as good would help me regain a sense that there is something still to enjoy, even when my life seems in shambles, when my career—hell, my whole life—seems a big fat joke, when I see myself as the center of all my problems. Even when I’m almost convinced that I don’t belong here, that I have no place or purpose.

I truly don’t have any goddamn time to be fucking around with a blog, or anything, anything, that is not related to my job, or with the needs of my parents. I’m not going to fuck around with Christmas cookies this year. (Well . . . maybe I’ll make a few kinds. To give to the elders who remain.) Christmas tree? Bah, humbug. I’m down on Christianity, too—all the white Christian nationalists have turned me off of religion entirely—in America and globally, the trouble, the evil, that religion causes far outweigh its so-called blessings. Overall, religion is still, always, eternally a way that greedy, mean, power-hungry people convince other people into doing horrible, selfish, mean-spirited things. I’m sick of it. Grow the fuck up and learn how to be a good person without having the imaginary threat of eternal damnation hanging over your head, okay?

But yeah, I think I’m gonna attempt another year of “Jar of Goodness.” Because I kind of need it. At least, let’s give it try before I call my doctor and ask to “up my dosage.” I’ve been doing a lot of journaling the past few years, and I have a lot I’d like to say about that. And there are several other half-baked posts I can complete and upload. Let’s keep a-goin’.

Totem Pole Is Up!

Ta-dahhhhh--! The totem pole is now standing in our backyard! This is its third location, and after more than forty years in Columbia, it’s back in Jeff City!

I told you about it in my previous post—how my cousin Phil made it, how it was in Aunt Minnie’s backyard, then got moved to my parents’ home in Columbia. It fell over last year, Dad gave it to me, and I’ve been rehabbing it.

The last thing to do was patch some missing broken wood on the wing, and let that dry, and dab it with some paint to make the wood filler look better, and wait for it to dry again.

On Saturday, Sue and I carried it out of the garage and up the steps to the backyard, where the two support posts and concrete platform were waiting. Sue held the totem pole against the posts while I wrapped wire around and around it, hopefully unobtrusively.

Later that day, we bought some solar-powered lights (for fun), including a solar-powered spotlight that is now pointed up at the totem pole. So I can look out the window and see it at night!

Earlier in the day, I mowed the lawn (first time this year!), so the whole yard is seeming really pretty right now. Despite the pollen, and the cold, gusty winds we had over the weekend.

Totem Pole

It’s a project! With a history! Oh, boy! I’ve been going around showing pictures on my phone to anyone who’ll look at them! It’s a totem pole, and my work is almost finished. About the only thing left is to stand it up in the yard.

First, the history. My cousin Phil made this in the late 1970s, I think as part of a Boy Scout project. Or maybe it was just for fun. Did Uncle Richard help him or at least inspire him? Probably, at least as a scoutmaster.

It was made out of a utility pole. The wings, bill, nose, and ears were nailed on. The features were chiseled in. The paint was Rust-Oleum, in the standard colors available in the seventies. Phil’s initials are carved into the back of the wings.

When first created, it was installed in the backyard of Aunt Minnie’s, out on Forest Hill. She had it in the far southwest (left) corner. It added a really unusual touch to her otherwise quite proper, upscale landscaping. She loved her family and appreciated everyone’s unique characters, so it probably didn’t faze her at all to have a totem pole in her yard.

It also has strong connections to scouting’s early, and sincerely held admiration of Native American spirituality and philosophy. Today, we call it cultural appropriation and know that it isn’t the innocent thing we used to think it was. We see that white people’s “take” on Indigenous people’s culture was indeed just that: a gleaning, from people who had had nearly everything taken from them: their land, their property, their rights, their language, their culture. But I contend that we should also recognize that early scouting’s admiration was sincere, even if flawed in hindsight, and that their idealized understanding of Native American perspectives and life-ways helped produce better people. It represented a bend toward nature and ecological wisdom, toward harmony, toward quietude and humility, toward simplicity. These are good things, considering the overall trajectory of US culture in the twentieth century: commercialization, natural illiteracy, discord, selfishness, materialism.

Anyway, I recognize that the totem pole could be viewed as problematic, but I appreciate it for what it has meant to my family. For me, it’s a totem of a time when scouting unselfconsciously admired and emulated Native American culture, and it produced some generations of people who were better humans for it.

So after Aunt Minnie passed away, by 1982 the totem pole was moved to my parents’ house in Columbia. There, it stood in the southwest (right) corner of their backyard. I was about sixteen, then, so the totem pole doesn’t figure into my childhood memories. But I sure mowed around it, lived with it, and it has long been a fixture in my parents’ backyard.

Here it is in April 2008.

Well, last year, it finally pitched over. (It was a rough year all around, I guess.) The base had rotted to the point that it fell over.

Dad picked up the pieces that broke off (the bill, the nose, the ears, a bit of the wing) and moved it all under his screened-in porch. And there it lay for months. He was wondering what to do with it. Last fall, he asked me if I had any ideas. Did I want it? Should we just chuck it down the ravine on top of fifty years’ of yard waste? So I took it, and all the pieces. It actually fit in my Civic, if I folded down the seats.

And so it ended up in our garage for the winter. The last few months, I started on its renovation. I decided, first, that I wanted it to remain looking elderly. I wanted to embrace its weathered look, its impermanence. Wabi-sabi. I would mix the paint with thinner so it would not look too dressed-up.

Here's a picture of it laying in my backyard, in early March. It had been rained on, so it looks dark. Remnants of the original paint are more visible, looking like flecks of white.

The wings were hanging on by only one screw, its nails having rusted and broken clean through, so it needed to be secured. That was pretty easy.

The bill, fortunately, was still in pretty good shape. A light sanding, and some thinned-out yellow Rust-Oleum, and it was ready to reattach.

The original nose had split in half, so it needed replacing. I’ve replaced it with a section of sweet gum from a limb that fell out of my parents’ front-yard tree. It is pretty sound wood, and I left the bark (with lichen!) on it. I think it gives a nice woodsy, organic look.

The ears, however, were a problem. Only one of the originals survived, and it’s pretty rotten. I’m no woodcarver, so I couldn’t fabricate new ones on the original pattern—even if I thought brand-new wooden parts would look good.

But I wanted to do something different, also woodsy, so we found some cedars that had been culled at a local conservation area. (MDC had cut them down in order to improve the native woodland habitat. Did you know that before white settlement, the only places cedars lived in Missouri was on cliff faces? Pretty much!) With loppers, I extracted some good-looking branching portions and brought those home.

After a bit of reflection, cocking my head to one side and the other, some careful trimming, and holding different branches in place against the totem pole, I selected my two new antlers. It’s a different look, but I like it.

I’m surprised I got them to balance as well as they do. I’m not convinced I’ve attached them very securely, but I think we’ll get at least a season out of the current construction. Reevaluate next spring.

Before I got too far with any repainting, I wanted to find some old photos. I kept looking through my parents’ old photo albums and striking out.

A lot of the photos I found were generic views of the backyard, and the totem pole was so blurry, I couldn’t tell much. But we sure had some pretty fall color! And my parents have a beautiful backyard.

The day before Uncle Richard’s memorial a few weeks ago, I finally found a photo of it from 1982, which turned out to be the year it was put in my parents’ yard (apparently). I was surprised at how much color had been on it—it had faded so much over the years!

I changed some of the color patterns, though I kept the same “palette” of 1970s Rust-Oleum paints: royal blue, sunburst yellow, regal red, gloss black, gloss white. I think it’s looking pretty good!

The only thing left to do is figure out how to repair a chunk of wood missing from the top edge of the wing. I glued a broken portion back on, but there is still a hole where (I think) a knot had been. Should I cut out a square-edged hole and replace it with a squarish piece of wood that fits in it? Or cut an old piece of wood to “kind of” fit and fill with wood putty? Or maybe leave it as is? Maybe I can think of a clever workaround. Beads or feathers. A big scallop shell?

After that fix, it’s time for the ceremonial placement in our backyard. It will be in the north corner, next to The Door. It will stand on a small circular concrete platform (so the rotten bottom won’t sit in water or stay moist), and it will lean against two stout metal fence posts, to which it will be wired. I could instead sink it into the ground, but with it already rotting and shorter, and the depth it would need to be sunk, I think it would end up shorter than me. And we can’t have that.

Because I think you’re supposed to look up at totem poles.

So, we’re in the home stretch with this project. More news soon.

Uncle Richard

In Memoriam

Richard Andree Schroeder

November 12, 1931 – January 7, 2024

Well, my friends, it happened: Uncle Richard has left us. Although it’s painful to contemplate, we are no longer blessed with his presence. As it is each time we lose someone dear to us, it’s hard to believe there can be a world without him.

As a small memorial, I want to meditate for a while about the things that seemed especially him. The qualities and the interests, the personality, the things he taught me about life just by being himself.

He was, and forever is, my Woodsy Uncle. Even if he were not a conservation agent, he still would have Touched the Earth, knew the names of all the plants and animals, observed and knew their interconnections and stories. Each life-form has a personality. There is a sense of wonder about, and an appreciation of even the least of these. Black morels appear a little earlier than the yellow ones. Black widow silk is intensely strong; you can identify it just by pressing against a single strand of it. Bald eagles, squirrels, leeches, and lichens: the world of nature is complex and beautiful. All critters are welcome.

He was adventurous, apparently from Day One. Where didn’t he go? What was he afraid to do? I don’t know. If something didn’t turn out the way you’d imagined, if you lost your compass or fell in the water, or if you fell onto a cactus in the dark, if you survived, you’ll be fine. In fact, you’re better off, because now you’ve learned something. And best of all, you now have a story to tell! He made a necklace for himself out of his own finger bones.

Which brings us to his artistic, crafty, creative side. From his grandpa, I guess, he inherited his sense of “make do with what you got,” his ability to figure out a way to make it work. His dioramas, his model planes, his ability to carve, his prowess with knots. When I was young, he once created a bow and arrow for me in the space of about five minutes: a small hickory sapling was trimmed at angles, notched, and bent, and a piece of kitchen string looped to each end. . . . Signs of his craftiness remain at our house, where over the years he fixed this and that, or repaired a windchime, or whatever. I can tell it’s his work because of the unique solutions and his attention to detail. He wasn’t afraid to fail, at times, either; he plowed ahead: Several years ago, he had a saying, which I copied and posted above my desktop; it went something like this: “If it’s jammed, force it—if it breaks, it needed fixing anyway.” (It turns out that such cut-to-the-chase advice can apply to manuscript editing, too!)

His artistic side blossomed in watercolors and oils, which sadly he decided to destroy several years ago, but we remember that side of him, that skill and patience. The painter’s eye is unique; it is as clever as the gambler’s dice, and it sees through What Is into all the realms of possibility. I honor his artistry . . . I honor it.

And of course, although he worked in paints, his first medium was words: his stories and poems. The ones he wrote down, and the ones he regaled us with whenever we got together. Soon after he died, Sue shared with me a dream she’d had, in which Uncle Richard was at a gathering with everyone, “holding forth,” telling stories and laughing, getting everyone else laughing, too. I think it was a sign that everything is okay, and we will all be okay without him. With his stories, you could never quite tell at what point the narrative would veer away from total reality into fiction and fantasy. And you know, ultimately, that’s all we’re ever left with: Is this history “true”? We must interpret it, exercise the muscle that distinguishes between the treasure and the sediment, the detritus. Sometimes the best truth is in the fiction. Sometimes what initially appears to be detritus is the real treasure.

Uncle Richard, despite his sometimes gruff demeanor, was a romantic and a nostalgic. He could find meaning and significance in all kinds of seemingly mundane, insignificant objects. His collection of writings bear this out; he teaches his reader (as he taught everyone who listened to him) that you can create from the most pedestrian topic a small, inspirational sermon about the Things That Really Matter. The necklace he made from the last bite of his mom’s last batch of lepkuchen. When we bought the house on Elm Street, there was a note on the refrigerator in Richard’s hand. It was about the aging process. Grandma had adored it: “This morning, I got up and put myself on like an old sweater. Holes in the elbows? I don’t mind—I made them myself!”

Things in our universe cannot last forever. Nature teaches us that everything must be recycled and transformed. Energy is neither created nor destroyed; the quantity of mass is conserved over time; the nutrient cycle, the carbon cycle, geologic cycles; physics, chemistry, biology demonstrate that everything that exists will be transformed. Nothing lasts forever. Raindrops wear away stones. Even our earth will eventually rejoin the sun and be reduced to its fundamental elements—to be combined later into all new, miraculous things. The detritus will become new types of mosses, new trees, new clouds, new rocks, and new fossils for someone to wonder about.

So, reluctantly, I guess it’s okay that Uncle Richard has departed from us. It’s not like there’s a choice; we have to accept it. The holes in the elbows? He made them himself. Was it jammed, was it broken? It needed fixing anyway. He left us with so many . . . so many stories to keep telling, and the impetus to find new adventures and stories to create about them. He’s gone from us and rejoined the cycle of transformation, the universal state of eternity. This is the way of nature; it’s part of the magic and mystery of our world, the Nature he honored his whole life.

Christmas Cookies from Aunt Ann!

Look what WE got! They arrived last Wednesday, December 20, in perfect time for Christmas! They are from Aunt Ann in Michigan!

For the past several years, Sue and I have been the family cookie purveyors, baking and shipping our family heritage Christmas cookies to friends and family. This year, with their various health concerns, and with the year kind of rough overall, my Mom and Dad bankrolled the annual cookie production, so that our cookie-gifts were from all four of us.

But this year, Aunt Ann, who is 96, found a way to make cookies and send them to family, including us! Whoaaa!!!

Can you imagine how this felt, after Sue and I’ve spent years trying to figure out how to make several types of cookies? Baking, tasting, critiquing, comparing the cookies in hand (in mouth) with the cookies in my memory? “The recipe says ‘butter,’ but do you think we should’ve used margarine—?”

I’m honestly not much of a baker. I didn’t learn at my mom’s or grandmas’ side. I’ve asked Mom and others for tips, but when it comes to it, I’ve had to figure it out on my own, trial and error.

And one of the reasons I make all these old-fashioned, family cookies—from my family and from Sue’s—is that I’m one of the few left making them. And I know how much my parents and the others in their generation enjoy having them at Christmas. . . . And Sue and I enjoy them, too, and we know others in our generation like them the way we do.

So we got this box in the mail, and it had cookie tins, and they were filled with these beautiful, gorgeous, precious, delicious creations from my Aunt Ann. Eight kinds! A note with them said that she had help from my cousin Sue Ann and from Aunt Ann’s helper/caregiver, Jennifer. I suppose Sue Ann and Jennifer were the “hands,” while Aunt Ann mostly did “supervision,” but hey, it counts.

Bully for her! Bully for all of them! I feel blessed beyond all reason to have the opportunity to enjoy these cookies, made by my aunt.

So, before we got too far into eating up these cookies, I did a little photo shoot, to the best of my ability. I’m providing the names, and links to possible similar recipes, if I can figure out what kind they are. Aunt Ann and my cousins might have different names for them. Every family has their own traditions, their own suite of “must haves.” So although a few of these are well-known, some of these cookies are rather unfamiliar to me.

But here’s the fun part: even the ones that are “unfamiliar” are still somehow familiar. They are the kind of Christmas cookies that my mom or Sue’s mom might have made. They are midcentury recipes, the kind I grew up with at Christmas bazaars at church, classroom mothers, Blue Bird gatherings, visits to friends’ houses. The kinds of cookies that won bake-off contests in the fifties and sixties. Also, when I was young, we spent some Christmases in Michigan with Aunt Ann and her family, so there’s a good chance I’ve had these very recipes before, made, for the most part, by the same hands.

White Chocolate–Dipped Ginger Cookies; Dipped Gingersnaps

I found a couple of promising online versions of these cookies, here and here. The white chocolate smoothed the edges of the spices. And these cookies weren’t as “snappy” (hard!) as the ones you get at the grocery store. Eighty-two thumbs up!

Lepkuchen!

Everyone’s got their own version of this German and German-immigrant favorite. There are a lot of variations because there are a lot of different ingredients to vary.

• Germans tend to use honey, while German immigrants used sorghum or molasses—and then the molasses type can vary, too.
• The leavening varies; eggs usually are included; my usual recipe, from my Dad’s grandma, uses strong, cold black coffee plus baking soda, but I’ve seen other recipes that use buttermilk and baking soda, which yields a richer flavor.
• The amount and types of dried fruits and nuts varies. I’ll bet that today’s mass-produced candied fruits are horrible compared to whatever was used 150 years ago. (Like, do you think people candied their own citron, lemon, or orange peel in great-grandma’s day? That would be a game-changer!)
• Also, in both sides of my family, black walnuts are necessary, while Germans in Germany would surely find our strongly flavored New World nut an abomination.
• And the array of spices varies.

I’ve seen two different recipes that Aunt Ann has used. I wonder which one she used this year. Obviously, she makes hers like bars, in a sheet pan, then cuts them after cooking. I roll out the dough, cut it into rectangles (I use a roller pizza cutter), then bake the rectangular cookies on cookie sheets. Aunt Ann’s were much more tender than the ones I make. But as with most everything else in this world, Variety is the spice of life!

Cherry Christmas Slices; Christmas Jeweled Icebox Cookies

I really, really want her recipe for these. They’re so pretty, they’re delicious, and because they’re icebox cookies, I know they’re fairly easy to make. Also, you can prep them ahead. And the idea of rolling the dough in colored sanding sugar before slicing is genius. I love those candied cherries, and the butter (yeah, real butter!) shortbread base is perfection.

These strike me as a midcentury recipe, one from the 1950s, 60s, or 70s, thus a mom/aunts/friends’ mom cookie, and not one from my grandmas’ and great aunts’ generation. And at this point (creak!) cookies from my own childhood are considered “old fashioned”!

I've found three possible online recipes for these, here, here, and here.

Snickerdoodles

The old favorite. Everybody loves these. I don’t usually make them because they’re pretty easy to make, and they’re often available year round. I put them in the category with chocolate chips and oatmeal-raisin cookies. They’re good on a cookie tray because picky eaters who are skeptical about raisins, dried fruits, nuts, and spices can nosh on them with comfort. And boy, are they a comfort cookie.

I Don’t Know These Cookies

But they were good! They were cake-like, and some kind of drop/ball cookie. With a tasty glaze.

Chocolate or Cocoa Crinkle Cookies

These were nice and chocolaty. There are lots of recipes for these, including this one here. I’ve even made crinkle cookies using Filipino ube, so they were a lovely purple. I’ve also seen recipes for pretty green matcha crinkle cookies! Still, I want Aunt Ann's recipe, because hers were really, really good.

Billy Goats

A Renner family favorite. Akin to “hermits” and “rocks,” these are perhaps the most undersung cookies of Christmas. Lebkuchen have an intriguing pedigree back to the Old World, but billy goats hearken to 1930s kitchens, where mothers tried to push as much nutrition as possible into their family’s foods. High school girls took Domestic Science classes that were abuzz with chemistry, physics, the relatively new discovery of vitamins, the importance of minerals and calories. During the Great Depression, providing your family with calories was considered important, because it gave them energy for all the physical activity Americans did: walking to school, walking to church, walking to stores, walking everywhere, because plenty of people didn’t own cars. Women and men labored physically in almost every job. Even clerical work required moving around a lot; even flinging something in the trash required physical movement, because trash cans were real, not virtual.

But I digress. The best thing about billy goats, hermits, and rocks cookies is not just that they were kind of a precursor to the granola bar, or fruit leather, or trail mix, it’s that they are greater than the sum of their parts. The combination of dates, black walnuts, brown sugar, and cinnamon yields a flavor that can only be called “billy goat.” If you can’t fathom how this can be, try it yourself. Seriously, these are elevated cookies. See here for the recipe I use, that came from Grandma Renner, the mother of my mom and of Aunt Ann.

Meringue Cookies

Unfortunately, these didn’t survive the shipping with a high degree of beauty. I think in order for cookies like these to arrive in a pristine state, they’d need to be wrapped like a wine glass in something fluffy and then tucked into their own hard-sided container, so that heavier cookies wouldn’t jostle and smush them. (These aren’t criticisms; just notes for myself, for future packaging situations.) Anyway, fortunately, and much more importantly, none of the flavor was damaged! There are lots of delicious flavors and morsels that can be incorporated with meringue cookies. I think that these were close, here.

These were very delicious! Again, I think a midcentury recipe; I’d say fifties or sixties. I’d love to have the recipe for this!

There you have it. Delicious cookies, but much sweeter to enjoy them from my dear Aunt Ann. What a nice gift, and a memorable one.

Gratitude.

. . . Okay, if you've read this far, then you deserve to receive one little tip I KNOW that Aunt Ann would want to share with you: Always use real vanilla extract. Not that ersatz stuff! If you're going to the trouble to bake your own cookies, then you want the nice, rich, opulent flavor of real vanilla.