text: Toys littered the living room floor, the Christmas tree stood undecorated in the corner and none of the presents were wrapped. And yet here I was pulling out butter and flour and eggs trying to make Grandma’s famous candy-cane cookies. Soft and sweet. Red and white dough twined together and shaped into candy canes. Dusted with crushed starlight mints and pearl sugar. I flipped through Grandma’s recipe cards, yellowed with age and speckled with food stains. Every recipe written in Grandma’s fancy cursive. Every “i” dotted and every “t”crossed with a swirly flourish, but no candy-cane cookie recipe to be found. It had been six weeks since her beautiful soul floated off to heaven and my heart still ached with missing her. Making one of her signature desserts might help my heart to heal. The doorbell rang and my older sister, Kailey, burst in. Her arms overflowed with presents and her hair looked like a messy birds nest on top of her head. “Help is here!” she said. “Where are the munchkins and the hubs?” “Dan took the kids Christmas shopping to buy me a present.” Tears threatened but I wouldn’t cry. I’d cried enough the past month to sink Noah’s ark. “Quite frankly, I needed a break. Everyone keeps trying to cheer me up and I don’t want to be cheered up.” Kailey gave me a one-armed hug. “You poor thing. I’ll be sad with you if that’s what you need. You were always so close with Grandma Kay. I can’t even imagine how you feel.” Kailey tossed a bag of red and white starlight mints on the counter. “Should I preheat the oven? Where’s the recipe?” “I couldn’t find it. It’s not in the recipe box she left me.” Kailey shrugged. “No worries. I can Google a recipe.” My throat felt tight. “No, I want to make Grandma’s recipe. Her. Exact. Recipe.”’ I paced back and forth in the kitchen. I had to remember. “I guess we’ll have to wing it.” “Isn’t that you always do with your life? Wing it?” Kailey asked. “Ha ha. Not funny.” I closed my eyes and pictured Grandma’s hands unwrapping two sticks of butter and placing them in a red mixing bowl. Her birthstone ring would glisten in the kitchen light, an emerald for me, a sapphire for Kailey. “Two sticks of butter!” I tossed them on a paper plate and popped it in the microwave for 30 seconds. “I can’t believe you’re going to microwave the butter!” Kailey said. “Grandma always left the bowl on the counter for what seemed like days before making the cookie dough.” “I remember,” I said. “The secret to soft cookies is slow-softened butter.” I removed the paper plate from the microwave and poured the butter into a bowl. “But we’re winging it, remember?” I pulled out the canister of sugar. “You don’t remember anything about the cookies? At all?” “Maybe a little,” Kailey said. “I do remember dipping a cup in and out of the sugar canister. It seemed like I did that maybe, three times? The cup wasn’t very big.” “Yes, I remember that too. So maybe it was a half cup measure? So about one and half cups total.” I measured the sugar, added a teaspoon of vanilla and cracked an egg into the bowl. “You can mix it now if you want. That looks about right, don’t you think?” “We’ll see.” Hailey turned the hand-mixer on high and swirled it around the bowl. The beaters clinked on the sides while the mixture grew frothy. The scent of vanilla wafted into the air. My chin shook and tears welled. “I can’t stop crying. Everything I see or hear reminds me of her. Even the smell of the vanilla.” I took a deep breath. “I just remembered how you begged and begged to taste the vanilla. Grandma told you it tasted awful, but you wouldn’t listen.” Kailey chuckled “Yes, I remember now. I snuck a sip from the bottle and spit it out and Grandma said, ‘I told you so!’ She laughed so hard she snorted.” Kailey measured some flour and a pinch of baking powder. “I guess we can tell how much flour to add once we see the consistency. Then, we can add it little by little?” She dumped the flour mixture into the bowl with the mixer still churning at full speed. A cloud of flour puffed into her face and hair. She coughed and wiped the flour from her eyes with the back of her hand. “Well, that was not graceful.” Kailey looked so funny with flour everywhere that we both broke into laughter. I full-on snorted when Dan and the kids walked in. He surveyed the kitchen and the two of us laughing. “Looks like things are going...well?” My kids, Kevin and Kacy, joined in laughing with us. Kevin asked, “Can we help?” “Aunt Kailey looks like a ghost! She’s all powdery!” Kacy said. “Of course you can help,” I said. I divided the dough into two big chunks. “Kacy, you can add red food coloring to this half and knead it into the dough.” I handed Kevin a rolling pin. “Kevin, you can unwrap the starlight mints, put them into a zip-top bag and then pound them with the rolling pin. That used to be my job.” “Cool!” he said. Dan put on some Christmas music and made hot cocoa. We all rolled pieces of dough into red “snakes” and white “snakes” and wound them together forming candy canes. A sprinkling of crushed peppermint mixed with pearl sugar was the final touch. While waiting for the cookies to bake, we all shared stories about Grandma Kay. “I remember when I tried to teach great Grandma how to play my video game,” Kevin said. “She drove the car across the tops of the houses and through the farmer’s fields. She just laughed when I tried to help her.” Kacy didn’t want to be left out of sharing a memory. “I colored pictures with great Grandma Kay one time. She colored the people’s faces purple and pink. She said those were her favorite colors and she could color the people however she wanted.” “Remember her fudge?” Dan asked. “So chocolatey and delicious. She said she always made it for me because I was her favorite grandson-in-law.” Kailey punched Dan in the arm. “Hey, you’re the only grandson-in-law.” The timer dinged. I pulled the tray of cookies out of the oven. The cookies had spread so much they looked like pink blobs. They were all stuck together almost covering the bottom of the pan. You couldn’t even tell they were supposed to be candy canes and the peppermint and sugar had fallen off and burned. Dan sensed something was wrong and came into the kitchen. “I can’t do anything right!” I cried. “I wanted these to be perfect for Grandma Kay’s memory.” Dan took me into his arms. “What would your Grandma Kay do if this happened to her? Seriously. Think about it.” A memory came to me. “Remember the time when the fudge wouldn’t set? Grandma didn’t panic. She just poured it over bowls of ice cream.” She always made the best of a bad situation. Something I needed to learn. “She would laugh?” I asked. “And we’d eat them with a fork I suppose...” ************** After the Christmas season flew by in a blur, I found a recipe card in the recipe box that I had missed. It was folded in half and lying flat under the other cards. Written in her fancy, swirly hand, it said, “ It’s the memories you make that count...not how good the cookies taste or how beautiful the gifts are wrapped or how fancy your tree is. Memories are what bring us together and that’s why I didn’t leave you the candy cane cookie recipe. Remember, it’s not the journey or the destination...it’s the memories you make along the way.