by Ann Major
Those kinds of memories mean so much more when you're stuck in a military base very far away from home. Christmas for servicemen and servicewomen is the loneliest time of year, a time of great vulnerability, since there is no way to go home to be with family. Instead, the military becomes your family. I can remember standing duty over the holidays and looking at the empty Ops building and the quiet revetment area devoid of jets and personnel.
For "Always and Forever," I drew upon my own experience as a Navy meteorologist who stood Christmas duty. My Marine Corps husband, Dave, was stationed in Vietnam for sixteen months. Every day I wrestled with fear and anxiety, wondering if he was alive or dead, because he was in I Corps area out in the bush. The chance of his coming home was very slim. I waited in agony, as every military wife did, hoping I never saw two officers come up to the house to announce he was dead.
The holidays for those in the service can be brightened by letters. They were our lifeline, a godsend, a reminder of a saner, gentler, more loving world than the one we worked and lived in. Besides letters, phone calls were wonderful. And moms sending our favorite cookies and cakes, which we'd all divide among our friends in the barracks. Believe me, you have no idea how much letters mean. If you have a daughter or son in the service, keep those cards and letters going to them.
When Dave was in Vietnam, I wrote a letter to him every day. That's close to five hundred letters. They were my outlet for expressing my love-and my fears-for him and to tell him about my job and what was going on at the base. Dave later told me that he used to read and reread those letters. His buddies did, too, because not everyone got as many letters as Dave did. He admitted that they helped him keep his sanity, his hope that he'd survive.
So, dear readers, know that a lot of me, my experiences and feelings about service life are woven through the strands of "Always and Forever." Being part of the military teaches you so many valuable lessons that civilian life doesn't. I'm proud I served my country for three years. And I'm glad that Dave made it back home to me!
Merry Christmas.
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THE MYSTERIOUS GIFT by Kathleen Creighton
A recipe from Kathleen Creighton:
THE PRETTIEST CHRISTMAS COOKIES IN THE WORLD
(and the best tasting, too!)
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup butter
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp flavoring (vanilla or lemon, or a combination of
the two)
In a large bowl cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs and flavoring and mix thoroughly. Set aside.
Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Add to the butter mixture and stir in until well blended.
Cover and chill for 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 375° F.
Roll out dough to 1/8" thickness. Cut into shapes with cookie cutters. (Note: The trick to rolling and cutting these cookies is to use plenty of flour. Don't be too kind to the dough-it's not important anyway.) Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 6 to 8 minutes, until delicately brown. Do not overcook.
Remove from pan and let cool on racks.
What makes these cookies special is what comes next: DECORATING!
To decorate the cookies you'll need:
Frosting-Sorry, I don't have an exact recipe. I just dump a box of powdered sugar into a bowl, add a couple of big spoonfuls of soft butter, a capful of whatever flavoring appeals to me (rum is nice!) and enough milk to make the right spreading consistency, and mix until creamy and smooth.
Colored Sugar-Blue, green, red. If you can't find it at the store in handy little bottles, make your own! Just put a couple drops of food coloring into a couple of teaspoons of sugar and mix with your fingers until evenly distributed and the shade you desire.
flaked coconut
chocolate sprinkles
colored sprinkles
cinnamon imperials (red hots)
tubes of decoration icing (optional)
cocoa (for chocolate frosting for snowmen's hats and
Santa's eyes)
Frost cooled cookies generously with white frosting. Immediately sprinkle with decorations of choice. Work quickly before frosting dries out or the decorations won't stick!
What makes these cookies the Prettiest Christmas Cookies in the World (and the best tasting) is generous use of white frosting. How you decorate is, of course, entirely up to you, but here are a few suggestions: Christmas trees with colored sprinkle ornaments and green sugar leaves, and a red-hot star on top; reindeer with chocolate sprinkles and a red-hot Rudolph nose; snowmen with flaked coconut snow, chocolate hats and red-hot buttons; blue sugar stars and colored sprinkle sparkles. The simple designs are the prettiest.
That's all you need. Put on some Christmas music (Elvis's "Blue Christmas" is great!) and invite friends and neighbors to help. (Eggnog adds a lot to the spirit of the thing.) Oh-one more thing-the secret ingredient: lots of laughter!
Prologue
He first saw the train in the window of Duffy's Pawnshop on the Monday after Thanksgiving. He hadn't noticed it there the week before; Duffy had probably hauled it out and dusted it off in honor of the official opening of the Christmas shopping season.
It looked strange there, out of place among the cameras and gold watches and Swiss army knives-a rusty, worn-out child's toy sitting slightly askew on a section of bent track.
He wondered who in the world would hock a beat-up old electric train.
In any case, from the price on it he figured Duffy was looking to unload it in a hurry, or else he didn't have a clue what collectors were paying for vintage trains these days. Even in the condition this one was in, somebody was bound to snap it up pretty quickly. It would probably be gone by tomorrow.
But that night, for some reason, he thought about the train. He thought about what it must have looked like when it was new-the gleaming black locomotive, with a shiny silver bell and a headlamp that really worked; the yellow cattle car with a loading ramp that folded down, and the green boxcar with doors that slid open and shut; the bright, shiny red caboose. Somebody must have had a lot of fun with that train. A boy, maybe… and his dad, of course. And maybe his mom, too.
Suddenly he could almost see that train chugging 'round and 'round, engine huffing away, wheels whispering smoothly over the track, whistle sounding clear and shrill. He could see a boy-a particular boy- bending over the controls, face intent, breaking now and then into smiles of pure delight. And the boy's mother, watching, with Christmas lights reflecting in her eyes, and in her hair…
Yes, he thought with a secret smile, it would take some work, but with a little bit of help a boy could still have fun with that train.
The next day, although it was out of his way, he went by Duffy's Pawnshop again. He was surprised to see that the train was still there in the window. Surprised, too, to find it looking so battered and forlorn after the vividness of his daydreams.
For just a moment he paused there, with his hand on the glass, seeing in its murky reflection the boy's face once more, alight with joy and wonder. And his mother's, softer but no less radiant.
Then he turned and went into the pawnshop, smiling his secret smile.
Chapter One
"Andrew," Karen Todd said to her son over breakfast, "I have some bad news." She took a fortifying breath and broke it to him. "The mouse is back."
Andrew's eyes shifted from the cereal box he'd been reading and focused on his mother's face over the top of his glasses. "How do you know?"
How like him, she thought, smiling to herself in spite of the multitude of worries that had kept her awake half the night. The Little Professor, she and Bob had called him when presented with that solemn, analytical stare.
"Did you see him?" the boy persisted, looking both fearful and eager.
"Well, no," Karen admitted. "But I found another mess. I had to throw away a whole box of Crispy Oats, a brand-new box I jus
t bought yesterday."
Andrew tilted his head and chewed thoughtfully, staring into space. After a moment, unable to find a loophole on which to base a rebuttal, he shrugged and said, "I really thought scaring him would work. Mice don't like loud noises, you know. Maybe next time, if we-"
"Andrew," Karen interrupted, and took another breath. "I'm sorry, sweetheart." She flinched and braced herself against the stricken look in her son's eyes. "I'm going to have to set a trap."
With false brightness, like someone clutching at straws, he said, "Couldn't you just put everything in the refrigerator, so the mice couldn't get it? Or… or, hey, how's this? We put all the food in jars-you know, glass? And that way-"
"Andrew… "
He gave up then; his lashes fell across his eyes, taking all expression out of his unformed, eight-year-old face. Neatly and methodically he stacked his orange juice glass in his cereal bowl, pushed back his chair and carried both his dishes and the cereal box to the sink- but not before Karen caught the slight but unmistakable quiver in the vicinity of his chin. Love, frustration and helplessness rose in her throat as she watched the little boy rinse his dishes with adult thoroughness and place them in the drainer. The back of his neck looked so slender… so vulnerable.
She went to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Honey, I don't like killing them any more than you do. But I just can't have mice in the house, you know that. I explained-"
He shook off her hand and gave an oddly grownup-sounding sigh. "I know, I know. They'll get into the drawers and chew up the clothes to make their nests, and gnaw on the furniture, and it doesn't even belong to us, it belongs to Mrs. Goldrich. And besides that, they go to the bathroom on everything, and they stink." He turned to her suddenly, his eyes bright and hopeful behind his glasses. "Do we have to kill them? Maybe we could get one of those traps, you know, like Cinderella? Sort of like this little cage, where the mouse just goes in and can't get back out. And then we could take it out someplace and turn it loose. Or, hey- I could keep it for a pet! How would that be, Mom? Don't you think that's a good idea?"
Karen pressed a distraught hand to her forehead. "Honey, I don't think they even make mousetraps like that anymore. I wouldn't know where to look." She'd certainly never seen one at the supermarket or the hardware store. Maybe she could ask at the feed store out on Route 7… Oh, how she dreaded disappointing Andrew again, even more than she dreaded the prospect of sitting alone in the long winter evenings after he'd gone to bed, listening for that horrible, lethal SNAP!
In a tone that bordered on desperation, she said, "I'll see what I can find, okay? No promises. Now, you go brush your teeth and get your backpack. Hurry up-it's time to go."
"No, it isn't," Andrew countered matter-of-factly. "It's not even quarter till." He paused, doing the calculations in his head. "We still have… twenty minutes."
"We have to leave early," Karen explained, "so I can drop the car off at Angel's Garage."
Andrew's face lit up. "Cool. Can I go with you? You could walk me to school after."
"Then we'd both be late. Run along now. Scoot." She aimed a gentle swat at the seat of his blue jeans, which he eluded without difficulty.
"Then can I go after school? You could pick me up when you get the car."
"What in the world," Karen inquired with exasperation in her voice, "would you find to do there for two hours?" The subject of her car, and the increasing frequency of its visits to Angel's Garage, was as sore a subject to her as the unwelcome visitor in her kitchen. More so, at the moment.
"Help Tony," said Andrew. He turned in the bathroom doorway to add proudly, "He lets me."
"Well… " Karen said. She coughed and muttered something vague about asking permission, though for the life of her she couldn't understand what her son found so fascinating about that garage and its surly proprietor, Tony D'Angelo. In her opinion, the mouse was more appealing.
Not that the man was repulsive, or anything. Far from it, in fact, which Karen was willing to admit might be at least part of her problem. She had always had trouble dealing in a cool and businesslike manner with men she found physically attractive, and without a doubt, Tony D'Angelo did have more than his share of animal magnetism. He had typically Italian good looks-thick, wavy brown hair and a cleft in his chin, a nose like the ones on old Roman coins, and dark, arresting eyes-looks that were usually described in pulp fiction as "smoldering." But somehow, whenever those beautiful eyes were aimed at her, particularly after surveying the steaming innards of her car for the third time in a month, Karen felt obscurely defensive, as if she were being accused of some particularly unpardonable form of child abuse. The man was often brusque, sometimes to the point of rudeness, and she had to be on guard constantly to keep from being intimidated by his superior attitude-not an easy task, considering she knew absolutely nothing about cars.
She told herself she only went to Angel's Garage because it was the most convenient one, located within walking distance of both her work and Andrew's school, but the truth was that for all his brusqueness, Tony D'Angelo was simply the best mechanic in town. Karen depended on him for her very livelihood. And, what was more, she trusted him.
"Go see Tony D'Angelo-he's as honest as the day is long." She wished she had a day's salary for every time someone had said that to her, beginning with that memorable, baking-hot day last August when she'd arrived in town with her car overheating and wisps of steam beginning to seep ominously from under the hood. "Oh yeah," everyone she'd asked had told her without hesitation, "what you want is Angel's Garage. Tony'll fix you right up, and he won't steer you wrong, either. He's as good-hearted and trustworthy as they come, and a darn good mechanic to boot."
In the three months since, Karen had come to believe in and appreciate the last two attributes of the garage owner's character; of the first she had yet to see any convincing evidence. Why her son seemed to enjoy his company so much, when all he ever did was bark orders at the child, was beyond her.
"What's wrong with the car this time?" Andrew now inquired, shrugging into his backpack and baring his freshly scrubbed teeth for Karen's inspection.
"Nothing, I'm just having it serviced," she said, mentally knocking wood as she brushed traces of toothpaste from her son's chin and tried without noticeable success to flatten his cowlick. "I just want to be sure everything's all set for winter. Everyone's saying it's going to snow next week."
"Cool!" said Andrew with the enthusiasm of a child born and reared in the Southern California sunshine.
Karen just sighed. The thought of something going wrong with her car at any time was a source of nightmares. In the wintertime it was unthinkable.
The car had been a long way from new when she and Bob had bought it, but it had been all they could afford then, as newlyweds. With Bob in the army, it had been primarily Karen's car from the start, and she had always driven it with great pride and proper respect for its venerable age. In another few years, she thought, it might even be considered a classic, although it came from an era not known for distinguished automotive design, and people had been known to break into impolite gales of laughter when she suggested such a possibility.
Still, she was rather fond of the old heap, and in any case, she couldn't afford to replace it even if she'd wanted to. The move had wiped out a good portion of her savings, and the rest had been taken care of by the discovery, during the school's routine vision screening in September, that Andrew had developed nearsightedness and would definitely need glasses. As far as Karen was concerned, Tony D'Angelo's mechanical expertise was all that stood between her and economic disaster. She would forgive him his surliness and put up with his arrogance if he would just-please, God-keep her car running!
"Hey, Mom, what's this?" Andrew asked suddenly as they were leaving their apartment.
Karen, who was struggling with the old-fashioned key and lock, answered absently without turning around, "What's what?"
"Look at this. Somebody must have sent us a present."
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"Probably for Mr. Clausen," Karen said, glancing over her shoulder at the large brown box that was sitting on the landing's threadbare carpet, just to one side of the door to their apartment. "The delivery person probably didn't feel like carrying it up those narrow stairs. Just leave it there. Mr. Clausen will see it when he comes back from his morning walk."
"Mom… " Andrew's tone was hushed. "I think it's forme."
"What?"
"Come and look. It has my name on it."
Karen bent over the box, her fingers brushing the letters neatly printed on the top with a black indelible marker. TO: MASTER ANDREW TODD. And that was all. No address, no labels, no return address, no stamps or postage of any kind. "How odd," she murmured.
"Oh boy, somebody sent me a present!" Andrew was already on his knees beside the box, measuring it with his hands. "I wonder what it is. Can I open it? Who do you think it's from?"
"I don't know," Karen said, frowning. "It doesn't say."
"Maybe it's from Santa Claus. Can I open it? Please, Mom, please?"
"Of course you can't open it, not right now." Once again, exasperation was creeping into her voice. Karen didn't like mysteries, and the box disturbed her in ways she didn't understand. "You're going to be late for school, and I'm going to be late for work, if we don't leave right now, this minute."
"Aw, Mom… "
