It's the week before Christmas and my grandma has me climb the paint chipped step ladder to bring down the ziplock bags full of Christmas cookie cutters. The smell of vanilla and my grandpa’s hair tonic melds beneath the pages of the Christmas cards taped up on the wooden trimming. My sister grabs the ball of raw sugar cookie dough and kneads it into a turtle structure as if she was sculpting playdoh. My mom is playing Christmas CDs in the back bedroom and my grandpa is watching Wheel of Fortune in the living room and here I am in the middle of Joy to the World and the Final Puzzle.
         

Sweat rolls off our faces despite the fans we have blowing. My grandma collects the dough from my sister. The rolling pin flattens the dough like a steamroller over fresh blacktop. Next my grandma throws flour on the flattened dough creating the look of fresh snow over the blank canvas. I take the Christmas tree cutter and press it down into the soft dough. The cookie cutter gives the dough its first glimpse of personality.  Until I come along with the green coated butter knife and turn the beige tree into a festive treat.
         

Outside, the branches thrash back and forth and the subzero temperatures make the neighbor’s cat freeze up in the foot of snow. Beyond the rusted barbed wire fence that surrounds two sides of my grandma's house, the dead corn stalks are coated with frost and break into pieces with a big gust of wind. The stalks that at the age of seven my cousins and I pretended was a jungle. The stalks at the age of thirteen made an artistic platform for a photo shoot. The stalks that now just look like corn stalks.
         

The timer begins to beep and the cookies slide over to the cooling racks to save themselves from the burning baking sheet. Frosting melts around the edges as we decorate the cookies. When the last cookie is frosted I grab a yellow star and a mug of hot chocolate. Grandma hobbles down the basement stairs to find her aluminum cookie tins. I'm left watching my white marshmallows melt into the warm brown mug like a snowman melting into a mud puddle at the end of winter.