In the Dalton household Valentine’s Day used to mean sour cream cookies. It was the same recipe her mother used for her Christmas cookies, just with different cookie cutters. Heart-shaped and frosted in thick buttercream icing with a single cinnamon Red Hot placed in the center. When Charlotte was in grade school her mother would make an enormous batch of these, and then line a dress box from Beulah Bechtel’s in wax paper and place the cookies in careful rows, separating the layers with more wax paper, for Charlotte to take to her class. Once Charlotte got older, she stopped taking cookies to school, much to the dismay of her classmates.

This year Charlotte wasn’t sure what to expect. Everything felt electrically charged.

With her ears still ringing from her mother’s shouting and banging around the kitchen, Charlotte went to the bathroom. When she came out she saw that her parents’ bedroom door was ajar, and she could see her mother’s purse sitting open on the bed. Charlotte glanced down the stairs and then tiptoed into the room, and as she drew closer to the bed she saw the little brown notebook peeking out of the top. Had her mother made any new entries? Were there any new discoveries? She quickly flipped through the pages, past the ones she had already seen to a new entry.

I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away My sins, even Mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

This was scribbled in fervent hand. It was not what Charlotte had been expecting, and she looked from the page to the bedroom doorway. She could hear her mother still banging around in the kitchen downstairs. What had prompted this? Aunt Vera’s illness? Was it something she had heard in church? Charlotte was usually the one actually listening to the sermons, but this seemed a little more intense than anything that might be engendered by Reverend Alsop’s mild words of worship. Was her mother doing something sinful that she needed saving from? Charlotte pulled a face at the thought. When Charlotte thought about sinning, she thought about Max Zimmerman, not her mother. She had decided that her parents had “sinned” only one time, in order for her to be conceived. Thank God, and, yuck.

She spent the next hour and a half lying on her back on the floor of her bedroom, listening to Eddie Fisher and constructing imagined conversations and scenarios with Max Zimmerman at the Valentine’s Day dance.

When she went downstairs for dinner she noticed that the sour cream cookies were cooling on the countertop. Charlotte wondered if the “calming” had worked this time.

Sour Cream Cookies:

1 Cup Shortening (I use part butter)

2 Cups gran. Sugar

2 eggs, Large. (or more)

5 Cups Flour

½ Teas. Salt

2 Teas. Baking Powder

1 Cup Commercial Sour Cream

1 Teas. Vanilla.

Beat Shortening, Sugar and Eggs together ubtil smooth. Mix Sift Flour, Salt and Baking Powder together and bland into creamed mixture alternately with Sour Cream and add Vanilla. Mixing with you hands is much more thorough, at this point—then separate into one bunch at a time and roll to one eigth inch thickness. Cut out and bake at 350 degrees about 15 minutes. I always double the recipe which makes an awfully lot of cookies. But, I have mixed it up and frozen part of the dough for later baking.