A Dream of Winter (the Perfect Winter Day)

We sat, just the two of us, at the dining room table. Well, you didn’t do much sitting (as usual). You bounced up and down with your knees on the chair when you saw the tiny plastic bags filled with colorful candies. “I need scissors and a bowl!” you exclaimed. You loved to cut things, though we could have simply opened the adhesive flap on each bag. Snip. You cut the corners and a waterfall of peppermints and gumdrops and tiny hard candies that looked like rainbow Christmas lights poured into one plastic bowl. 

“We need frosting”! I attached the plastic tip onto the frosting bag. They make it so easy, I thought, as I pulled the pre-assembled base of the gingerbread house out of the box. We started with the roof. I piped dots of white frosting on each shingle while you carefully placed peppermints and gumdrops on each one. You knew exactly what you wanted and gave careful instructions - “This door should be red, put the lights very close right next to each others. No, like this, mom, let me show you”. 

Soon our hands were covered with frosting and clumps full of sprinkles were smeared all over the surface of the table. “This is delicious”, you said, as you licked it off your fingers. Some of the candy started to slip from the roof - it was too heavy - and we applied more frosting, holding our breath as we placed each gumdrop back in place.

We covered a spare piece of gingerbread with frosting. You spread it out with a cheese knife and dumped a package of yellow sprinkles on top. I piped “SANTA” but the gel wouldn’t stick to the glitter and the letters slid down onto the table. You thought it was hilarious and burst into laughter as each letter dripped down. 

I should take a picture, I thought. I started to push the piles of other stuff on the table, crayons and books, mostly, out of the way and quickly calculated if I had time to grab my camera and set up a backdrop before you moved on to the next thing. “No!" you shouted, “I need that in the picture”. You pointed to a disposable hanger that had held your new fleece pajamas, and propped it up against the back of the house. I knew better than to reason with a toddler, so just laughed and snapped some photos on my phone - the instagram perfect picture lost to the real life moment.