5. You can’t miss a year. If you can’t come, send your cookies or you forfeit your place. There are other people who want to join the group. This rule resulted from the rule above.

6. After five years of coming to the party, you have tenure and aren’t ever dropped unless you don’t bring or send cookies.

7. It’s always on the first Monday in December. Put it on your calendar and count on it.

8. Bring copies of the recipe for each of us.

Jackie falls in love, marries, and moves east and stops coming. Donna loves the party but hates making cookies. Janine has an affair with a colleague and divorces, and she and her lover move to Benton Harbor. Thus, positions open for cookie virgins. So the membership ebbs with the flow of our lives. Right after Thanksgiving, we bake, give delights to one another and the hospice, then pass the dozens of different cookies we’ve obtained to friends, family, neighbors, babysitters, and manicurists. They treat the guests of other Christmas and Hanukkah and Solstice gatherings. A ripple effect of delicious nibbles in the darkest time of year. A ripple in our lives of the joy of one another.

1

Marnie

Pecan Butter Balls

2 cups pecans

2 cups flour

1 cup melted butter

1/2 cup sugar

2 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 teaspoon salt

Confectioners’ sugar

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Chop the pecans in a blender or food processor until you have two cups. Combine all of the ingredients except confectioners’ sugar. Gather the dough into a ball. With floured hands, shape into one-inch balls and bake on ungreased cookie sheets. I line my cookie sheets with wax paper or parchment paper and spray them with Pam. Bake for 20 to 22 minutes. Pull the cookies and papers off the cookie sheet and onto a cooling rack and let them cool slightly; be sure they’re still warm and then gently shake them in a bag with the confectioners’ sugar. Place them back on the paper and add more confectioners’ sugar while they cool. Makes 5 dozen

MY DREAM FLUTTERS AWAY as I open my eyes. I stretch my arm out for Jim, but he is gone. Outside, the snow falls in tight crystals, almost like fog. Disney sits laughing beside my bed, his tongue lolling and his tail thumping the carpet. Today is a big and busy day and I had better start it. Reluctantly, I leave the remnants of the dream in the still warm bed and slide on my lavender fleece bathrobe, let Disney out, pour last night’s coffee in a cup, and zap it in the microwave. I hug myself for warmth as Disney disappears behind the garage.