Holiday memories... Fruitcake recipe, my teddy bear and cookies..... lots of cookies.
Holidays were always special when I was growing up. I was the oldest of three girls. My father was attending college and working full time until I was 8 years old. Each of us got an outfit of new clothing and a toy. Grandparents's gifts would include handmade pajamas or bathrobes, or handmade toys. One year, my grandmother gave me a purse, just like hers. She filled it with chapstick, a small change purse, mints, sweet and low, and candy cigarettes. --all those treasures I'd find in her purse. Perhaps she was trying to keep me out of hers. When Dad was young, he spent his Christmas money buying his mother a dozen blown glass Christmas balls. There was no money for wasteful things like wrapping paper, so he wrapped the box in the Sunday comics. Almost sixty years later the last of those balls broke. They had been carefully wrapped and protected, stored away from the other decorations, so nothing would fall on them. Every year, at least one gift under the tree w...