i created an easy centrepiece for my new dinette. it looks odd with just two candles -- my limited art education from home economics in grade school is that things like this should be in odd numbers. but i'm not going to worry about it. i'm sure in my travels around the apartment i would find a third candle, not a match but it's my centrepiece, so there.
i found myself at the st. lawrence market today as i wanted to get cheese. i like to have the extra old gouda cheese with my hot chocolate on Christmas morning. that's what we would have when we were little children. it was a treat as we would have that only for that day of the year. we'd also have one egg each, sunny side up. my mother, no matter how tight money was, always made sure that we each had an egg. other times of the year, two eggs would be scrambled with onion and tomato and the whole family would share.
on my mother's last Christmas before she died, she had asked if we can have chocolate marble ice cream for our midnight snack, and she never asked for anything normally, always contented with what we had. i gave money to one of my young sisters and they went to get the ice cream plus the german chocolate flavour which mother also loved. i complained because i could not eat ice cream at night else i would have a bad tummy ache. but she was happy. i was already working at the time and i got a lot of presents from work and clients -- imported fruit cakes, cheese, liver paté, sweet ham, and filipino sweets. the whole table was full of food and mother was so awed by it all, for a moment she was just staring at the table with misty eyes. she had been paralyzed for five years by that time. if i had known it was her last Christmas with us, i would have had fireworks for her, and anything else that would make her happy. ever since then, my siblings and i would recreate that Christmas table in her honour. irony was all she ate during the midnight Christmas snack was a piece of sugar-springkled doughnut and the ice cream.
in my first Christmas here in Canada, i set up the table for two, bought half a dozen doughnuts and german chocolate ice cream. i placed a serving on the one end of my table for her, complete with all the table setting for dinner. when i woke up in the morning, i was a confused because the ice cream should have melted in the cup and the doughnut hard from exposure overnight. my first thought was that my mother's ghost had visited and ate them. i called my brother in chicago and my sister and told them about it. my brother of course was panicked thinking he'd be visited next.
then i remembered i ate them just before i went to bed. duh! but i didn't tell them that part. 🤣
Congratulations this turned out lovely, i have been trying to do something similar for several nights now but just can't get the lighting right. Love the story of the ice cream, we share our home with a cousin who would do just that very thing. Lovely to have these warm memories and to share them with us.
