Favorite Holiday Memory

Do you have a favorite memory from a holiday? Like, one that’ll make you remember those holidays for holi-DAYS to come? I actually do. I have one that really sticks out to me.

This particular holiday memory was about when I was 12 or 13. My sister was about 9/10. We went to my Nanny’s house (nanny is grandma in Italian) to bake Christmas cookies. She found this recipe online to make Candy Cane shortbread cookies. They wouldn’t actually taste like peppermint, it was just colored red and white to resemble candy canes. We made the dough, and within literally minutes of us just attempting to roll it out, it cracks. We were working on the dough for a while at this point, we’ve made a couple cookies that don’t look terrible. The oven was heating up, my nanny had made us some hot chocolate, we were listening to Christmas music. I was really starting to get in the spirit of the season. When the time came to put the cookies in the oven, my nanny put the tray in the oven. She came over from the oven, placed her hands on my sister’s shoulders, looked at us both, and said, “You know what girls, these cookies might taste like crap.” We laughed so hard. We couldn’t stop laughing, it was so funny to my sister and me. See, at my house, we weren’t allowed to say anything even related to swearing. So even the word crap was funny to us, especially because my Nanny said it. But anyway, the cookies came out of the oven. They weren’t spectacular, but they weren’t awful.  It’s a memory that I’ll remember as long as I live.

-Marina