True story, updated! 'Christmas & the Cookie Lady'
[SinglePic not found]On a small table nearby is a portrait of her daughter, draped with a gold cross and turned toward the little tree. “That way she can look on it, and she will be with us on Christmas,” Bates said.
[ Editor's Note: A question from an astute reader sent me searching for the original version of the story that inspired the remebrance I posted here on Dec. 2, 2008. I finally found it and am reprinting the 2001 story at the end of this more recent recollection which, we could say, is the "behind the scenes" part of the story. As it turns out, my memories were a little bit off in a couple of places. My "cookie lady," for example, was in her 70s. I am posting the 2001 story because I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did rediscovering Inge Bates, my "cookie lady." - Brenda Sullivan ]
A few years back, when I was working for The Courant out of the Manchester bureau, I found myself without a news story for the next day. It was an evening just before Christmas, so news was slow. I decided to drive around Manchester and look for an interesting Christmas display, with the idea of writing a story about the person who had created it.
I came across a display that was very simple but sweet. There were three of those illuminated, animated deer that looked like they were bowing their heads to nibble on the green grass poking through a light covering of snow. The windows on the Saltbox house each had a small wreath and candle.
I got out of the car, took a few photos and then knocked on the door to introduce myself.
After a couple of minutes, the door opened and a warm draft of cinnamon-vanilla wafted over me. Standing there was a petite, white-haired woman wearing an old-fashioned frilled apron. Her round, wire-rimmed glasses were speckled with flour.
I told her I was a reporter for the Courant and that I’d photographed her display. And in a German accent (that I recognized because I was born in Germany) she exclaimed, “Well, hello! Why don’t you come in and see the rest of the decorations!”
Like someone out of an old Frank Capra movie, she slowly opened the door a bit wider and I saw all sorts of glittering objects behind her. My heart jumped.
As I stepped inside the softly lit front parlor, I saw that every surface was covered with decorations – including several miniature Christmas trees, each distinctly differently adorned, and a large live Christmas tree (one of three in the house, as it turns out) blanketed with ornaments.
I turned toward the bay window that I hadn’t noticed from outside, and saw that each pane held a white porcelain ornament – some of them angels, some of them reindeer, Santas or other figures.
My hostess pointed to the fireplace mantel where several different 3-foot high angels were arranged. Each one, she said, represented a family member who had passed on.
Then she told me that most of the decorations were in honor of her daughter, who had recently died in a terrible car accident. She was in her 20s.
“My daughter just loved Christmas,” the mother said. A miniature tree decorated with strings of simulated pearls was dedicated to her. Next to it, was her daughter’s photo. “The pearls are my tears,” she said.
A much-traveled cookbook
We continued talking as we walked together into her kitchen, which was covered with flour and baking sheets and mixing bowls and bags of sugar and cookie tins brimming with intriguing looking treats. One tin that I was invited to sample was filled with lip-smacking tart, (real) lemon flavored Christmas-tree-shaped cookies with a subtly-sweet white glaze.
In the middle of the Formica table – it reminded me of the one where I made cookies as a child with my Swedish grandmother – was a tattered cookbook with a broken spine, written in German. It was one of the few things this woman brought with her when she immigrated to America at 16 years old.
I took off my winter coat and we passed the next couple of hours talking, making cookies, taking photos, and eating cookies washed down with cold milk.
Then I told her I had to get back to the office and write my story. She gave me a nice flour-y hug at the door, and I left with a small stash of cookies for the road, feeling totally infused with the Christmas spirit.
A ‘strange woman’
Back at the office, where the police scanner was on 24/7, I was working on my story when I heard a dispatcher say she’d gotten a call from a woman who was concerned that “a strange woman” had been in her mother’s house “for several hours… claiming to be a reporter.”
I called the police dispatch center – laughing, of course – and explained that I was the culprit, and offered to call the daughter to reassure her. They said they would take care of that.
Unfortunately, the daughter had every reason to be concerned about her 60-something mother inviting strangers into her house. But how lucky for me I found myself in search of a story that night.
I would like to invite readers to share your own Christmas stories. And if you or someone you know really goes all out with decorations, or is otherwise full of Christmas spirit, let me know how to contact this person and I will bring that story to Mansfield Today. You can e-mail me at mansfieldeditor@htnp.com or call me at 942-8367.
With all the fear-inducing news on TV and in the papers today, it’s good to remember what counts, and that’s people – like my cookie lady – and that most of us do treat each other with kindness. That’s how we manage to pull through anything that comes our way. And those are the stories I would most like to bring to you.
Posted Dec. 2, 2008
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ORIGINAL STORY
Christmas is bittersweet: whipping up batches of Christmas Treats
Dec. 20, 2001 – By Brenda Sullivan
The smell of nutmeg, ground almonds and cookie dough filled the kitchen as 74-year-old Inge Bates worked into the evening, finishing up batches of 14 kinds of Christmas cookies.
Bates whisked confectioner’s sugar into stiffly beaten meringue, and occasionally referred to a baker’s cookbook. “Oh my, this is really falling apart,” she said as she gingerly turned the fragile, yellowed and tattered pages.
With recipes written in German and measurements spelled out in grams, the book has been Bates’s baking bible since she was 16.
Nearby, on the pink formica counter where Bates worked, sat a metric-based scale sent from Germany to Bates, shortly after she and her new husband moved into her Manchester home in 1958.
“I just love Christmas. I always have,” said Bates, a sturdy and energetic woman with a thick head of silvery white hair. “It isn’t about what you get, or what you give. It is about the spirit of Christmas.”
Her fondness for the holiday is a combination of warm memories of Christmas Eve gatherings while a child in Frankfurt, Germany, and the pleasures of being a great-grandmother today, with her family soon to be gathered around her at the holidays.
Each room of her tidy home, with furniture so deeply polished it seems to glow from within, reflects Bates’s Christmas spirit.
A picture window is decorated with white and sparkling Snow Baby figurines — from little hooded babies astride reindeer to angel babies dangling from stars or a sliver of a moon — collected over the past five years.
Many lovingly placed items also hold bittersweet meaning.
Arranged on the fireplace mantel that is decorated with strands of cotton “angel hair” are several angel figures, each one standing in for a departed loved one — husband, mother, father, aunt, uncle and a daughter.
“They are all still here with me,” Bates said as she motioned toward the angels and then placed her hand over her heart. “And they will be with us on Christmas Eve.”
In a corner of the room stands a three-foot Christmas tree decorated with strings of tiny oval beads. “I call this my Barbara tree, in memory of my daughter,” she said.
Two years ago, her 42-year-old daughter Barbara Wilson was killed in a car accident on Route 6, Bates explained. “Each of those beads represents all the tears I have shed since she has been gone,” Bates said, quickly adding that while she deeply misses her daughter, the tree also celebrates Barbara’s joy in life and love of Christmas
On a small table nearby is a portrait of her daughter, draped with a gold cross and turned toward the little tree. “That way she can look on it, and she will be with us on Christmas,” Bates said.
Bates expects at least 18 guests on Christmas Eve, including her six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, her 92-year-old aunt, and a host of other family and friends.
Other times of the year, the house is almost as full, Bates said, since she is often visited by family members.
“I am always cooking because I know there will always be someone who will enjoy it. When my grandsons come to visit, the first thing they do is open the refrigerator,” she said and laughed.
Being surrounded with family has helped her enter her later years with a sense of joy, she said. “I like the way things are going. I have no complaints — none whatsoever.”
Posted Dec. 22, 2008 – Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.
For more information see: http://mansfield.htnp.com/opinion/christmas_and_the_cookie_lady.html
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