Housekeeping

She's not what I'd call typical. 

The girl was getting ready to come home from college for the holidays, but she needed to do a little housekeeping first. 

"Hey ... can you do me a favor? Can you put nine dollars in my college bank? Our machines don't take cash or credit, they only take College Bucks."

She didn't want to be the kid who brought everything home in need of a wash.

"Sure, but it will cost you. I need a personal shopper:  Do you think your brother will like these?" 

I sent a link to what must have appeared to her sensibilities to have been The Most Hideous Pair Of Sneakers On The Planet. The Kind No Self-Respecting Teenager Would Ever Wear In A Million YearsTM. 

"You can't be serious," she shot back adding a link to a pair that I Never, In A Million Years, Would Have Guessed He'd LikeTM."

It will be good to have her home.  Even if it's not all sugar and spice. 

This is all I could think about as the gingerbread house sat beside me in the car, filling the cabin air with holiday cheer and filling my heart with glimpses of Christmases past. 

Fourteen to be exact. 

It hasn't been every year that I've managed to procure one of these seasonal kits from our local bakery, but I've scored enough of them for the kids to think of it as one our most enduring traditions. 

It brought the whole family together in a kind of frayed patchwork that makes us quirky and unique. 

My husband will crack his knuckles in anticipation of how his hands will cramp as he uses them, in a vice grip fashion, to apply steady pressure to the piping bag that I, in my only job aside from purchasing, had filled with royal icing. The kids will loudly unwrap what's left of the candy stash -- slowly pilfered as we bided time -- and playfully argue about a particular pattern of colorful confection and the proper way to stucco it to the dark gingerbread's exterior.

Our laughter scatters the wrappers, now empty and crumpled, all around the dining room where the sugar dust of renovation gathers. It also summons the ghosts of those who aren't with us any more. 

My mother ... in chunky sweater and still wearing her winter hat inside ... folds her arms and grins at my father, who is underneath the Christmas tree, setting up the train. 

The memories aren't all idyllic. There will be hard feelings bubbling up that might, under ordinary circumstances, create a mess. These stress of expecting too much or getting it all wrong. But even they are comforting in their own way.