For "Always and Forever," I drew upon my own experience as a Navy meteorologist who stood Christmas duty. My Marine Corps husband, Dave, was stationed in Vietnam for sixteen months. Every day I wrestled with fear and anxiety, wondering if he was alive or dead, because he was in I Corps area out in the bush. The chance of his coming home was very slim. I waited in agony, as every military wife did, hoping I never saw two officers come up to the house to announce he was dead.
The holidays for those in the service can be brightened by letters. They were our lifeline, a godsend, a reminder of a saner, gentler, more loving world than the one we worked and lived in. Besides letters, phone calls were wonderful. And moms sending our favorite cookies and cakes, which we'd all divide among our friends in the barracks. Believe me, you have no idea how much letters mean. If you have a daughter or son in the service, keep those cards and letters going to them.
When Dave was in Vietnam, I wrote a letter to him every day. That's close to five hundred letters. They were my outlet for expressing my love-and my fears-for him and to tell him about my job and what was going on at the base. Dave later told me that he used to read and reread those letters. His buddies did, too, because not everyone got as many letters as Dave did. He admitted that they helped him keep his sanity, his hope that he'd survive.
So, dear readers, know that a lot of me, my experiences and feelings about service life are woven through the strands of "Always and Forever." Being part of the military teaches you so many valuable lessons that civilian life doesn't. I'm proud I served my country for three years. And I'm glad that Dave made it back home to me!
Merry Christmas.
THE MYSTERIOUS GIFT by Kathleen Creighton
A recipe from Kathleen Creighton:
THE PRETTIEST CHRISTMAS COOKIES IN THE WORLD
(and the best tasting, too!)
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup butter
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp flavoring (vanilla or lemon, or a combination of
the two)
In a large bowl cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs and flavoring and mix thoroughly. Set aside.
Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Add to the butter mixture and stir in until well blended.
Cover and chill for 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 375° F.
Roll out dough to 1/8" thickness. Cut into shapes with cookie cutters. (Note: The trick to rolling and cutting these cookies is to use plenty of flour. Don't be too kind to the dough-it's not important anyway.) Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 6 to 8 minutes, until delicately brown. Do not overcook.
Remove from pan and let cool on racks.
What makes these cookies special is what comes next: DECORATING!
To decorate the cookies you'll need:
Frosting-Sorry, I don't have an exact recipe. I just dump a box of powdered sugar into a bowl, add a couple of big spoonfuls of soft butter, a capful of whatever flavoring appeals to me (rum is nice!) and enough milk to make the right spreading consistency, and mix until creamy and smooth.
Colored Sugar-Blue, green, red. If you can't find it at the store in handy little bottles, make your own! Just put a couple drops of food coloring into a couple of teaspoons of sugar and mix with your fingers until evenly distributed and the shade you desire.
flaked coconut
chocolate sprinkles
colored sprinkles
cinnamon imperials (red hots)
tubes of decoration icing (optional)
cocoa (for chocolate frosting for snowmen's hats and
Santa's eyes)
Frost cooled cookies generously with white frosting. Immediately sprinkle with decorations of choice. Work quickly before frosting dries out or the decorations won't stick!
What makes these cookies the Prettiest Christmas Cookies in the World (and the best tasting) is generous use of white frosting. How you decorate is, of course, entirely up to you, but here are a few suggestions: Christmas trees with colored sprinkle ornaments and green sugar leaves, and a red-hot star on top; reindeer with chocolate sprinkles and a red-hot Rudolph nose; snowmen with flaked coconut snow, chocolate hats and red-hot buttons; blue sugar stars and colored sprinkle sparkles. The simple designs are the prettiest.
That's all you need. Put on some Christmas music (Elvis's "Blue Christmas" is great!) and invite friends and neighbors to help. (Eggnog adds a lot to the spirit of the thing.) Oh-one more thing-the secret ingredient: lots of laughter!
Prologue
He first saw the train in the window of Duffy's Pawnshop on the Monday after Thanksgiving. He hadn't noticed it there the week before; Duffy had probably hauled it out and dusted it off in honor of the official opening of the Christmas shopping season.
It looked strange there, out of place among the cameras and gold watches and Swiss army knives-a rusty, worn-out child's toy sitting slightly askew on a section of bent track.
He wondered who in the world would hock a beat-up old electric train.
In any case, from the price on it he figured Duffy was looking to unload it in a hurry, or else he didn't have a clue what collectors were paying for vintage trains these days. Even in the condition this one was in, somebody was bound to snap it up pretty quickly. It would probably be gone by tomorrow.
But that night, for some reason, he thought about the train. He thought about what it must have looked like when it was new-the gleaming black locomotive, with a shiny silver bell and a headlamp that really worked; the yellow cattle car with a loading ramp that folded down, and the green boxcar with doors that slid open and shut; the bright, shiny red caboose. Somebody must have had a lot of fun with that train. A boy, maybe… and his dad, of course. And maybe his mom, too.
Suddenly he could almost see that train chugging 'round and 'round, engine huffing away, wheels whispering smoothly over the track, whistle sounding clear and shrill. He could see a boy-a particular boy- bending over the controls, face intent, breaking now and then into smiles of pure delight. And the boy's mother, watching, with Christmas lights reflecting in her eyes, and in her hair…
Yes, he thought with a secret smile, it would take some work, but with a little bit of help a boy could still have fun with that train.
The next day, although it was out of his way, he went by Duffy's Pawnshop again. He was surprised to see that the train was still there in the window. Surprised, too, to find it looking so battered and forlorn after the vividness of his daydreams.
For just a moment he paused there, with his hand on the glass, seeing in its murky reflection the boy's face once more, alight with joy and wonder. And his mother's, softer but no less radiant.
Then he turned and went into the pawnshop, smiling his secret smile.
Chapter One
"Andrew," Karen Todd said to her son over breakfast, "I have some bad news." She took a fortifying breath and broke it to him. "The mouse is back."