Last *********. Not ********* day, but the couple of weeks or so leading up to it. I allowed myself to really miss my grandmother. Ten years ago I had a falling out with my mother – there was some violence, and I filed a restraining order against her. Not long afterward, my Nan was diagnosed with lung cancer (she’d been a 2-pack a day smoker for like 55 years, wasn’t a huge surprise). She had been living alone at the time, so she moved in with my mom because chemo and stuff. That meant I never got to see her again, until she was literally on her deathbed. It also meant that my Nan never got to meet her first great-grandson until that day. My son was 3 years old when Nan died. He’s nine now. Nan and Pop loved *********. They went absolutely balls-out in decorating – they had a nutcracker collection to rock the ages, and an electronic spinning ********* tree in like the 80s. Nan would have us baking cookies starting the day after Thanksgiving (after Black Friday shopping, naturally). My favourite were the krumkake – Norwegian cream horns made one at a time on her ancient iron and wrapped around a wooden cone mold. They’d have a big ********* Eve dinner and invite the whole neighborhood. One year everyone had their own lobster and Nan spiked my bowl of eggnog because “Hey, it’s just once a year!”. After dinner we’d all pile in to the light-strung trailer of Pop’s tractor and he would drive us up and down the roads dressed as Santa and we’d all sing ********* carols. Last year, I just missed Nan so much. I wanted to make Krumkake and watch the *** in the soaked cake burn away with those blue flames and decide which gingerbread men to decorate as mailmen for the postal workers. I wanted to hear Nan laugh her too-much-champagne laugh and hug me just a little too tight and say “I love ya kid, a bushel and a peck, and a hug around the neck.” I probably spent about a week crying into a bowl of sugar cookie dough. I really, really needed it. This year I’m buying a goddamn krumkake iron if I have to get it directly from Norway.