Christmas Morning: Enter the Engineer

This was going to be a sweet and sentimental post about my lovely Mennonite mother who is at age 90, losing words and memories slowly and steadily. She remains beautiful, wise, and strong and cognizant of all the truly important things: faith, gentleness, boundless grace. But she seems to have forgotten how to make the “tea ring” that graced our table every morning for Christmas as long as I can remember. It’s a tradition we all hold dear and delicious so I decided that the baton had been passed and it was now going to be my job. This was bittersweet. I miss my mama as she used to be: great with words, confident, and my teacher in the kitchen. I grew up working alongside her always, the Mennonite equivalent of a sous chef.

So this afternoon I decided this was the time and my little galley kitchen was the place. I made the dough, it raised beautifully. I rolled the dough, it was an awkward oval. My husband, who brings to Christmas festivities the same enthusiasm most people have for Groundhog Day, was nearby. I called out to him, “The dough has risen but I’m not sure what to do.” He answered, “The jello is ruined and you are through?”   Clearly nobody is aging at the Awe household! “No,” I said, “I’m trying to make my mother’s tea ring and I’m afraid I’m going to mess it up.” This moment was laden with sentiments of Christmas Past for me and I was having trouble rising to the task.

Enter the Engineer husband, who fortuitously put aside his Scrooge tendencies because he loves me. “How hard can this be?” He spread butter, sprinkled cinnamons, spread brown sugar, and swaddled this yule log of yeasty dough into a perfect circle. He made the 2/3 cut and laid those pieces down like they were babies at nap time. My heart was 10 times lighter.  The tea ring rises, Christmas breakfast can go on and the lion will lie down with the lamb.

God Bless Us Everyone!
~Ellen~