![]() In my parents’ satiny wedding photographs, Grace stared at Bud. ![]() He nudged Gram in the ribs, as if she were in on the joke, and, instead of his name, wrote: I make no promises. ![]() When the priest presented Dad with a contract to raise his children within the Catholic faith, Dad signed in Arabic. My parents were married in Gram’s church. ![]() “I don’t know how you people would celebrate Christmas if I wasn’t around. “Only higher civilizations bake cookies,” she says to me, raking fingers through the shrubbery of my hair. Bud dunks them in his demitasse of ahweh and calls them “Catholic cookies.” Her eyes tighten as she watches him eat. Her Wurstcakes are slim as Communion wafers. All part of Grace’s arsenal: she’s engaged in an internecine war with my father, Bud, over the loyalties of the children. A universe of cookies: chocolate-planted peanut butter sinus-kicking bourbon balls leaping reindeer and sugar bells German press-form cookies from her grandparents’ Bavarian village- Springerle- green wreaths, candy berries and a challenging, grown-uppy variety named for the uncut dough’s sausage shape: Wurstcakes. Tables and chairs are covered with racks of cooling cookies, eight baking sheets slip in and out of the oven-as tiny as something in a troll’s house. ![]() Every year between Halloween and Christmas, my grandmother Grace transforms her apartment into a bakery. ![]()
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