1
Our Advent calendar was 20 years old, boxy and nearly the size of a dollhouse. When Raul brought it down from the attic I wanted to fling open all the tiny doors at once to peek at the surprises inside, but he wouldn’t have it.
“We are waiting patiently for the Savior,” he said sternly. “You will open one door each day. In the morning—before coffee—we open the door. You see?”
I opened the first small door, with the 1 on it, and found a wee sprig of silk holly. “This year it should be poison ivy. Ha! The holly and the ivy, get it?”
We were still recovering from Thanksgiving. I had a vicious case of poison ivy from digging fishing worms, and Raul had a nasty cold one of kids had brought to the table. The food had been worth it, though: Bobbie’s banana cake with caramel frosting, pumpkin pie, pork roast and turkey and sweet potato casserole.
Naturally, the minute the plates were cleared and we sat at the table with coffee we started talking about what we’d eat at Christmas.
“My peppermint cake, of course,” Bobbie said. “Rachel, you bring the sweet potato casserole and the broccoli salad, like you always do, and Aunt Rose, you make your ambrosia.” Then she looked at me. “What about you, Snap? You up for bringing the dressing?”
I sat up straight. “Yes. And you know what else? I’m going to track down Grandma Leah’s recipe for Company Oyster Dressing and bring that, too.”
Mama looked doubtful. “I haven’t seen that recipe in a good while.” In fact, no one could remember having oyster dressing since Grandma Leah had passed away, more than 10 years ago. How had it been allowed to fade away from the holiday table?
“I’ll find it,” I said with the confidence of someone who has no idea. “Don’t you worry. It’ll be oyster dressing on Christmas, just like the old days.”
2
I began the serious business of tracking down Grandma Leah’s oyster dressing recipe by searching the back of my cookbook cabinet above the microwave, but no lost recipes had fallen into the back corners. I found an old church cookbook from Grandma Leah’s Methodist church and felt a surge of hope—surely Grandma had contributed her famous dressing to the cookbook. In fact it had several recipes for dressing—Corn Bread Dressing, Mrs. Joyce Rountree’s Dressing, and something called Hard Times Dressing that called for a half-cup of sawdust, I kid you not—but Grandma Leah’s Company Oyster Dressing wasn’t among them.
I wrote a group email to all the aunts, cousins, sisters, and everyone else I could think of who might have a copy and demanded they look and get back to me right away. Then I sat back and waited.
3
Being on steroids for poison ivy was a blessing. I got tons of shopping done, and opened the door to the post office on December 3rd to mail a package to my nephew in Boulder. I packed a box of his favorite Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies, a Santa beard from the dollar store, and an Amazon gift card. At the last minute I threw in another Santa beard and a second gift card for his girlfriend, Lacey. They’d been living together for nearly a year, and thank God I’d remembered her. There was only one customer ahead of me at the counter—a woman with two parcels. A young girl stood next to her with two more packages in her arms. On the side of one box she’d printed, in large green letters: “No socks inside!”
Back at home I ran to the computer to check my email. The older generation had all sent negative answers—and they all asked for a copy of the recipe when I found it. No one under 40 had responded at all.
4
Our church Christmas program was planned for simplicity so we could put it together quickly with a small number of people. We didn’t have a proper choir, so eight of us agreed to form one temporarily and sing to the remaining 20 congregants. The minister’s wife said, “It’s all songs we know, with a narration of the Christmas story. We’ll only need one practice.” We practiced, and found that, unschooled and deficient of talent, we didn’t have the wind to sing “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks” or “Angels from the Realms of Glory.” Anyway, angels and shepherds appeared in the lyrics of other songs, so it hardly mattered.
When I got home from rehearsal I checked my email. Nada.
5
The public library had a section dedicated to cookbooks, but nothing with oyster dressing like Grandma’s. I even went to Goodwill to see if there were old cookbooks that might prove useful. I cut down a knick-knacks aisle and found a man there, grieving over a small box.
“Why would someone get rid of this?” he asked as I passed by. I don’t often strike up conversations with strangers, but having been asked such a direct question, I stopped. The man stood well over 6 feet, a lean Black man wearing round glasses and denim overalls. He showed me a box holding a pewter-colored cross with “On Your Graduation” engraved on it.
“Someone meant to give that to a graduate and for them to keep it, but here it is in the Goodwill. I imagine there’s a story behind that.” He set the graduation box back on the shelf with an air of regret.
I blinked back a surprising tear, and he looked concerned. “Didn’t mean to depress you.”
“Oh, well, it’s everything,” I confessed. “See, I’m here looking for cookbooks and trying to find something close to my grandmother’s recipe for oyster dressing. I’m obsessed.”
“I do about all the cooking for Christmas in my family,” he told me. “Oyster dressing’s the easiest thing in the world. I get a box of stovetop stuffing mix and add a jar of oysters and their juice, with enough chicken broth to get it good and wet, then bake it.”
“Goodness, that is easy.” I smiled and hurried on to the cookbooks. A box of stuffing mix? I wasn’t that desperate.
6
The day of the church Christmas program, the music left propped on the organ had been mysteriously scrambled. Instead of following “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” with “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” the minister’s wife began playing “We Three Kings,” which should have come at the end. Those of us in the choir shifted successfully but didn’t know what we were expected to sing next. After much rustling of song sheets and a stage-whispered consultation with the minister’s wife, we got back on track and limped to the finish. Twice we finished singing before the minister’s wife had quite finished playing. Afterwards the minister said, “Well, wasn’t that a lot of fun?” His wife, still seated at her instrument, shook her head no with unnecessary force. He didn’t get a single “Amen” from the congregation, either, but with no decrease in enthusiasm he added, “And don’t you know that Jesus enjoyed it!”
“No, not even Jesus,” Raul told me after. “Jesus wept.”
7
I opened my email to find a message from my Colorado nephew, Dan. Not only did he thank me for the package, which had arrived more quickly than I’d dreamed, he also sent me a digital file of 17 songs he likes. He called the collection the "Auntie Snap Mix," and it included songs by a number of musicians I'd never heard of, including some really strange ones. One singer had a deep, phlegmy rattle in the back of his throat that he played like an instrument. Horrible. What I loved, though, was Dan’s obvious preference for songs about joy. One was called "Make a Joyful Noise," and another was from an album with Joy in the title.
A possible explanation for all this joy: Dan and Lacey had decided to get married at the Little Church of the West in Vegas then fly to North Carolina for their honeymoon. They’d be here for Christmas!
8
Rachel was beside herself about Dan’s wedding, and though he and Lacey were technically eloping, she and her partner, Rho, planned to fly to Vegas to be there. “I couldn’t resist, Snap. My only child, married!” She danced away, and then danced back. I could tell she was dancing even over the phone because she is heavy-footed like all Forman women.
“Lacey’s going to wear the pearl drop earrings I wore when Rho and I got married,” she said. “I express-mailed them before I decided we should go to Vegas. They got them already so it’s fine.”
9
Bobbie sent me a text message: “Wait’ll u see this!” with an eye-popping emoji. I thought for sure she’d found the oyster dressing recipe. But no, it was a picture of a Christmas postcard that Grandpa Daniel sent Grandma Leah in 1938, when they were both 18. Sweetest thing you ever saw.
Bobbie sent a family-wide text with a picture of the postcard, and Dan’s fiancée, Lacey, responded: “Oh I found some cool family pix behind a drawer of Dan’s old oak washstand. Will bring them Christmas!”
10
Mama claimed she’d already looked, but I went to Mama and Dad’s to search for Grandma’s recipe myself. I took every cookbook down from her cabinet—two long shelves’ worth and one short shelf—and shook every one of them to see what fell out. Mainly what fell out was flour and recipes snipped from the newspaper.
Mama yelled from the den: “Check inside the cabinet above the refrigerator. I remember seeing an old recipe file box up there some time back.” I got a step-stool out of the laundry room and stood on it, heart beating from blood pressure and excitement. Two recipe boxes! They were the only things up there; Mama and Dad no longer used the higher cabinets.
“Whoa, there,” Dad said. “What you climbing in the cabinets for?” I scrambled down the step-stool with the boxes, jubilant. Dad steered straight to a gift basket received from distant friends and dipped out some chocolate-covered peanuts for a snack.
“Did you find anything?” Mama hollered.
“I found two recipe boxes.” I put them on the kitchen counter and stopped Dad from putting the lid on the peanut jar. I needed a dose, myself. “Both of them perfectly empty.”
11
From the minute Rachel and Rho arrived in Vegas, Facebook nearly combusted with the volume of pictures posted—the happy couple, the darling retired minister who officiated, the sweet Little Church of the West, and the after-ceremony lunch at the Bellagio.
Between watching photos being added to Facebook, I called all the relatives I hadn’t yet heard from and nagged them about Grandma Leah’s Company Oyster Dressing recipe. Still no luck. I’m kinda pissed. It seems to me no one’s even trying.
12
Christmas baking was in full swing at our house. Yesterday I made Mama’s cream cheese wreath cookies with the tedious little candied-cherry bows, and rolled out extra-thin sugar cookie dough to make Christmas trees with sprinkles. Today I made pumpkin bread, the one combination of cinnamon and cloves which, when mixed with the sweet essence of pumpkin, fills me with memories of love, light, and a compulsion to speak what God has put in my heart. This bread of life is from Grandma Leah’s old recipe—one of her recipes I’d managed to hold onto.
I once ran to her when I’d been ditched by a guy, my junior year in college. Grandpa Daniel wouldn’t believe I’d been ditched—he told me he’d never liked that guy and I’d done the right thing by sending him packing when there I was, the one who’d packed and fled to my grandparents’ house for comfort. That weekend Grandma and I baked pumpkin bread, filling the house with the sweet smell of spices, and I’d eaten nearly half a loaf in a sitting. We had instant coffee and pumpkin bread at the kitchen table, and Grandma had listened to me moan and patted my hand and said, “Oh, my land,” at regular intervals. “Oh, my land,” was her catchphrase, used to express wonder and disbelief.
When I left I took another loaf back to the dorm with me—the perfect antidote for an aching heart.
I thought about that while baking a double batch of pumpkin bread for the holidays. All my life, going to Grandma Leah’s meant the smell of sausage and coffee that lingered in the kitchen, which was kept almost uncomfortably warm by the oil heater that took up a full corner of the room. Counter space was limited, and we’d bumped shoulders while mixing the bread. I fell into a sort of trance while stirring the batter, remembering the warmth, the scents, and the clang of her dented metal loaf pans. For a moment it was like Grandma’s kitchen existed inside my own over-sized modern kitchen. I snapped out of it and poured my batter into glass loaf pans. Surely baking pumpkin bread while having visions would magically call forth her recipe for Company Oyster Dressing. I stayed alert in case it appeared.
13
My Moravian friend Sara invited us to an open house to see her family’s putz. Every December they constructed a complicated miniature village that told the story of the coming of Christ from prophecy to the nativity scene. Sara's putz featured an Isaiah who, for aesthetic reasons, was stationed inside an abalone shell as if it were a divine phone booth. She also incorporated driftwood, moss, and sand. We drank Russian tea with cookies and fruitcake, and there was something of Dickens in all the comings and goings, the stamping of feet on the door mat, the constant replay of recorded music that accompanied the lighting of the putz as new people arrived. It put me in a mellow and mildly sorrowful holiday mood. With all her collection of old church cookbooks, Sara had nothing for oyster dressing. And I’d had such hope for the Moravians.
14
Rachel and Rho returned from the wedding thrilled with their Vegas experience. “We stayed at the Monte Carlo. It’s not fancy like the Bellagio, but I liked it and we walked all over the place and saw everything we could. We saw the Blue Man Group at one of the other hotels, and oh, how we laughed! Audience participation is part of the show. We had to take a roll of paper starting at the end of the aisle and unroll the paper as fast as we could to send it down to the end of the aisle. I got so excited and was laughing so hard I accidentally sent my purse with the paper down the aisle, and had to get the people further down to pass it back. Snap, you have got to go see Vegas.”
Vegas was the last place on earth to find a vintage recipe for oyster dressing, so I had no intention of going.
15
Raul listened to the Sirius Christmas channel while working on a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle that covered the entire dining room table. I passed through and found him bent over the puzzle, swaying to the music and singing “Nine babies swimming….” He also loved singing “Holly, Jolly Christmas,” only his version includes the line, “’Somebody… waits for you—nobody waits for me.’”
16
I visited Great-Aunt Lily at her memory care home thinking she might be the very person in our family who would remember the oyster dressing recipe. She often recalled every detail of a day back in, say, 1947. I took her a loaf of pumpkin bread and sat with her in her tiny hot apartment. Aunt Lily kept getting up to walk around and open doors. I feared she might walk out the door and disappear, but she opened the main door only once, and seeing the hallway outside her room she closed it firmly and instead opened the door to her closet.
“One of these doors is the right one,” she said, shuffling back to her recliner and sitting on the edge of the seat.
“Which door are you looking for?” I thought she must need the bathroom.
“The door to go home,” she said, in a tone that implied I was dim-witted.
I asked about the oyster dressing, but she looked at me blankly before getting up to open the closet door again.
17
The oyster dressing business was making me tense. Why was the recipe so elusive? Nothing online sounded anything like Grandma Leah’s recipe, which I remembered as being a full handwritten page, with a long list of ingredients.
Scrolling through recipes online reminded me of a Christmas when Raul and I lived in St. Louis. The stars and the Internet and someone's treasured family recipe aligned, and I found instructions for making love feast buns. Being several states away from Sara’s Moravian church, I hadn’t had a love feast bun in ages. Seeing the recipe made me yearn for them with all my heart, so one rainy Sunday afternoon I rolled up my sleeves.
First I made dry, unseasoned mashed potatoes. Next I creamed butter and sugar, added yeast and warm water. When I stirred the potatoes into the yeast mixture, the dough turned silky-smooth and glossy. I added nutmeg, mace, orange and lemon peels, and flour, almost weeping with joy.
The day was cold and cloudy, a discouraging environment for bread dough. I circled our tiny house to find a warm spot for proofing. There were none, so I warmed the oven, turned it off, and stuck the mixing bowl inside for two hours.
As I removed the pan and set the oven for the final baking, Raul pushed me out of the kitchen to cook a ham hock in the pressure cooker. "Look at the size of this hock!" he said, holding it up before it went into the pot.
I formed my little dough-balls, placed them on a large pan, and shrouded them in a clean dishcloth. A weak sunbeam fell on the center of the dining room table, where I left them for the final rising.
Raul's pressure cooker was singing and sputtering. A large pan on the stovetop held simmering potatoes, tomato sauce, onions, and garlic. When I returned in 30 minutes to check my rolls, both dining room windows and the kitchen door were wide open.
I ran to close them. "Why? Why?"
Raul stopped me. "We need air because of the steam and food smells."
My buns never doubled in size. They came out looking like rather large, smooth biscuits.
We ate our love biscuits with Raul's ham hock and potatoes.
"This is real soul food," he said.
18
Mama’s balance went to shit this year, and since her walker made everything awkward and we didn’t want her falling into the hot oven, Rachel, Bobbie, and I went over and baked Christmas cookies to fill her tins. We also made peanut butter fudge, and Bobbie made chocolate peppermint bark. The house smelled fabulous, and Dad was delighted. Altogether I left with a feeling like, I don’t know, a sort of yearning like that mentioned in old hymns about heaven and going home and an unclouded day. Days like that were the best of Christmas.
19
I got sidetracked looking for the oyster dressing recipe in boxes of old photographs and letters at Mom and Dad’s. Many of the photos had notes written on the back or in the margins—a lost form of communication. The photos with their little notes made me sad, and I never did find any recipes. Days like that were the worst of Christmas.
20
Thinking about how much fun we’d had filling the cookie tins at the farm, I decided to recreate Grandpa Daniel’s Christmas candy box. He used to keep a large cardboard box filled with brown bags of candy from the country store (chocolate drops, peach buds, coconut clusters, orange slices, and chocolate-covered peanuts). The box stayed in an unheated back bedroom near their kitchen, and we all loved it. Oyster dressing was going nowhere, but I’d at least be able to resurrect that tradition. It cost a ton, but I found all the candy and stashed everything in a cardboard box. I couldn’t wait to see Dad’s face when he opened it.
21
Raul switched to a Mannheimer Steamroller Christmas channel, and “Un Flambeau, Jeannette Isabella” caused a sudden flashback to my high school French class. Under Madame’s eagle eye and dramatically raised left eyebrow, country children like myself learned French carols, including “Jeannette Isabella.” Each year we spent one class period before the holiday break caroling for other classrooms, a blessing they no doubt recall to this day with great fondness. I kept trying to sing along with the instrumental version, but I knew I was repeating the phrase “courons au berceau” too many times to make sense. Back when I remembered the words, I once sang all my French carols for Grandma Leah, who had been mightily impressed. “My land!” she’d said, and her blue eyes had shone like flambeaux.
22
While looking for her ceramic light-up tabletop Christmas tree Mama discovered another box of papers and stuff from Grandma Leah’s house! As soon as she called I rushed over to go through it item by item, and found a letter from Mama to our grandparents dated 1972: “Dear All: We went to Sears yesterday, mainly because Rachel was elected to buy her teacher’s Christmas present. The class had raised $6.05 so we got a desk set that was $5.75. We bought some family presents, too. Bobbie picked out a book for Rachel but wouldn’t let us put it away, said it was hers. Of course she tells everybody what she buys. Bobbie said tell you she’s going to give you a present & she’d love to tell you what it is.”
23
Sara’s number came up on my phone and I was certain she’d found an oyster dressing recipe tucked away, but no—she called to laugh about the unrehearsed Christmas pageant at the Moravian church. As people arrived, children were invited to select a costume from boxes in the vestibule. During the service the pastor read the Christmas story, calling the appropriate characters to come to the front: “All those who identify as Mary or Joseph, please come forward.” There was one Mary, and no Josephs at all; one shepherd and a three-year-old lamb; four angels; and something like fifteen Wise People, since those were the flashiest costumes.
“The lamb was everywhere,” Sara said. “Up and down the aisles, with the poor shepherd running behind, trying to keep up. Finally, the sweet lamb caught sight of her father and went to sit on his knee, and the shepherd gave up.”
24
I opened the last little door of my Advent calendar to behold a wee grubby lamb, and sighed. “That’s it, then. Christmas Eve, and no chance of Grandma Leah’s oyster dressing on the table for Christmas.”
Raul was sick of the words “oyster dressing.” He pointed at me. “Name something you are grateful for.”
“I am grateful for…all sorts of things.” I held up the lamb, whose wool had grayed over time. “I’m thankful we haven’t lost a single piece from our Advent calendar. That alone is a Christmas miracle. But I’m a little disgusted, too, I’m not gonna lie.”
Christmas Eve meant a casual supper at the old farm. Dad made a crock pot of sausage and cheese dip, somebody baked a round of brie and dumped fig preserves on it, there were chips and dip, cold ham on biscuits, just a lot of good things.
I presented my box of Grandpa Daniel’s candies, and that made a sensation. “Not now!” I told Dad, who was ready to dive in. “This is dessert.” I put the box in the laundry room to stay cool. I’d also brought Santa beards for my sisters, but they refused to wear them while preparing food—probably just as well.
“Got the dressing done?” Bobbie asked. She was arranging pepperoni and cheese on a platter. She and Jason and their kids were spending the night at the farm rather than drive back and forth.
“Two pans of regular dressing—no oyster. Maybe I should check the top shelf of Mama’s cookbook cabinet again.” I started to drag a chair over there, but there were people in the way.
“Give it up, Snap Bean,” Bobbie said, popping a pepperoni slice in her mouth. “I mean, even if you found the recipe now it’s not like you’d be able to make it. No oysters, for one thing.”
“But I promised I’d make it!”
“But you didn’t find the recipe!” she said, perfectly matching my volume and whine.
Christmas Day
Christmas dawned sparkly and bright with frost. Even though we lived the closest, Raul and I were almost the last to arrive, preferring to let the younger folk get settled in and simmer down. As it was, the minute we walked in dogs barked and children ran in giddy circles. Dad was stoking two fires—one in the basement and one in the den. I found a tangerine someone had stepped on and left mashed in the hallway.
I greeted Aunt Rose and Mama, then took the tangerine to the kitchen to toss. Rachel had set up the coffee pot for another round. I wished I’d brought my bottle of Bailey’s.
“Dan and Lacey are running late,” Rachel said. “Lacey wanted to cook something to participate in her first Christmas as part of the family, so the two of them went to town yesterday to shop at Whole Foods. Not enough money in the world to get me there on Christmas Eve. They’ve become pescatarians, so I don’t know what they’re bringing.”
Mama shuffled into the kitchen with her empty coffee mug on the tray of her walker. “Presbyterians? Who?”
“Pescatarians. Dan and Lacey. Vegetarians who eat fish.”
“Oh.” She refilled her mug and began the long, slow putter back to her recliner.
“Bobbie’s got Christmas movies on in the basement for the kids, which should keep them out from underfoot for a while, at least.”
Bobbie came through the door from the basement at that precise moment, red in the face and wearing her Santa beard. “Ho, ho, ho,” she said. “Merry Christmas! I need a nap.”
After going up and downstairs to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, I went to the back porch for a breath of peace and cool air. Raul had joined the group outside supervising the smoking of a turkey and a turkey breast. I sat in the porch swing. Soon the merry-go-round of reheating and putting food on the table would begin. When I closed my eyes, I felt a sting of tears. In five years, would anyone even care about the family holiday traditions? Who would make the four pitchers of tea, who would fill the huge copper bowl of tangerines on the hall table? Would the hall table still be here in five years? Why had we allowed Grandma Leah’s recipe for oyster dressing to disappear? How could important things slip away so easily?
I thought of Great-aunt Lily, searching for the door that would take her home. I understood exactly how she felt.
A car door slammed. I gave myself a shake and walked around front to see who’d arrived. Dan and Lacey were taking gifts for the Dirty Santa exchange and a foil-covered casserole dish out of the back of their rental car.
“Yay! Happy first married Christmas!” I said, and managed to kiss them both while their hands were full. “Let me help you.” I took the warm casserole dish from Lacey. “What’d you make?”
“Oyster dressing,” Lacey said. “We found an old recipe for it in the back of that little dresser, with the photos and the postcard that had fallen behind the drawers. Dan thought it would be fun to make it and surprise everyone.”
The casserole dish wobbled in my hands before I steadied it. When I could speak, the words came out in a low gasp: “Oh, my land.”