Plot Monkeys

In retrospect, i received two fabulous gifts for this year. I received more than that, but two stand out as being particularly fabulous.

One is my Hermoine Granger wand.

Yup, a wand.

And in response to the question my brothers asked, no, it doesn’t really work. (Though I did threaten to poke them in the eye if they didn’t stop teasing me over the gift.)

The wand isn’t about whether or not it is useful. The wand is about someone understanding me enough to know that this is a gift I’d love, but would never ever buy for myself or even ask for it. My sister-in-law drew my name and she’s the one who knows me best, so she would have bought me something I loved no matter what she bought. But I had the chance to chat with my nephew (her son) recently and I must have mentioned the wand. I don’t remember mentioning it, but I must have, because he told his mom and she bought it and well, I was pleased as punch. It’s going to have a place of honor on a shelf in my office.

As my brothers and husband made fun of my gift, my SIL turned to them and said, “She’s the one who bought me my Ken as Captain Kirk and Barbie as Yoeman Janice Rand dolls. She gets it.” And I do. I love you, Joy! The wand is fabulous, but the fact that she knew I’d love it is priceless.

My second favorite gift also involved my sister in law. Every year, Joy and I get together to make flan for Christmas Eve, which is known as Noche Buena around these parts (it’s a Cuban-American tradition. My family is primarily Italian, but my now deceased paternal grandmother and my aunt shared Cuban roots, so we celebrate Cuban style on Christmas Eve and Italian style on Christmas day). Anyway, after my grandmother passed away, Joy and I took the recipe and have been trying to recreate it. This year, we finally did it. Took us five years to make two perfect flans…to figure out the secret of what my grandmother knew intrinsically. We also drink while we cook and that might be part of the problem. Usually, we make them at night, too, when we’re tired. This year, our busy schedules kept us from baking until the morning of Christmas Eve. We chose pomegranate mimosas as our drink of choice and they weren’t even strong enough to give us a buzz. So, well rested and sober, we made two perfect flans. Who knew?

This year, we also decided that we needed to learn how to make the deviled crab recipe that my aunt is famous for. She’s in her late seventies and makes about 125 of these delicious spicy treats all on her own for all of us (we have forty-five people on Christmas Eve) to enjoy. She has no daughters and her daughter-in-law doesn’t live in town and I’m not even sure she cooks. It was up to us to learn. So we went over on the day before Christmas Eve and cooked while my aunt supervised. We prepared the sauce, cleaned the crab meat (the hardest part, IMO), rolled those suckers and breaded them. We did everything but the frying. On the way home, we both were aching. How did this woman do this every year? The same way my grandmother stirred the sugar over a hot stove until it carmelized (which takes about twenty minutes of non-stop stirring) for the flan. With love.

We needed Advil.

But all in all, spending time with family and learning traditions and sharing time with my aunt were priceless gifts that I’ll treasure always.

So…did you get anything you really loved this year?