toffee & tradition
Despite having actually remembered to buy powdered sugar and other ingredients I would have needed to pull together a Christmas-cookie-making-Saturday with the kiddos, it turned out that there were other things that vied for our attention that day and time ran out to do what I had planned. As the day ventured on, I started chipping away at my plan, slowly squeezing what needed to be done into the remaining hours and leaving out what wasn't essential. Finally it got to mid-afternoon and still the kitchen counters were full and nothing had been done with the cookies.
It was then that I realized that I had made a plan but I had never really believed in the plan which was why it never happened. It sort of just sat there unfinished, with ingredients I could have used, but that wasn't really what I wanted to make or take to the church chili supper anyway. Absentmindedly, with the end of the day deadline drawing ever nearer, I pulled down my most tattered cookbook (created by the family that celebrates Christmas the most, so I was making some progress) and began hunting for something that I sort of had in my head.
And then I landed on the English Toffee recipe. Four ingredients -- butter, sugar, chocolate chips, and almonds. Did I have almonds?
One child was stirring almond bark in a double boiler on the stove for another recipe and I climbed on a chair to find just a handful of almonds left in my bulk bag, way on the top shelf. Honestly, they probably needed to be used anyway. I sent them through the chopper and realized I couldn't mess the recipe up because I only had enough for one recipe.
Butter and sugar combined on the stove, equal parts of each... I stirred and stirred and stirred and adjusted the temperature until I got nervous and called my mom. Finally, it began to take the form of what I sort of vaguely remembered it looking like when I watched mom make it as a little girl. One of my own children came in to the kitchen to ask an unnecessary question right in the middle of it and I suddenly realized why mom had always seemed edgy when she was working on a time-and-heat-sensitive thing like toffee. Like, you have had all day to talk to me. This entire recipe takes 10 minutes from start to finish and if it goes a moment too long, it is ruined. Your question will have to wait.
I poured out the toffee, spread the chocolate chips over it, sprinkled on the almonds, and popped it all into the fridge. And there it was, right before my very eyes - 2 dozen of the 4 dozen treats I needed for the chili supper.
Heritage is having a place to turn to for help. It is something that can be inherited -- non-monetary richness. That is why poverty comes from a lack of heritage - a lack of connection. In poverty, a link has been broken. In heritage, a link has been maintained.
I thought of it often through the holiday season, as we maintained tradition and did many of the motions we always do. There is so much comfort in the rhythm of the expected. I know it grounds my children, and I know it grounds me - the way that each year, certain things happen as they always have, and certain things continue as they always do.
Some things never change, and that is a gift.

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