I love making the chocolate covered cherries at Christmas as much for the memories they bring as for the current consumption. I had made them and left them out for indulgence the first year our oldest son brought his wife home for the Christmas gathering. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, we are a blended family, and he got a bonus of twin daughters when he married their mother. They were about five years old on this Christmas.
I began to notice that every time I looked up, Lauren had a hand in the chocolate covered cherries. I found myself with a dilemma. If I cut off the number she was eating, would I be seen as a wicked step-grandmother? Would her mother, whom I did not know well yet, think I was being stingy with the cherries or taking too much authority in correcting her daughter? Overriding all of this was my concern that we were headed toward one sick five-year-old. I took what I saw as the safest option and told my daughter-in-law. Steph put a limit on the cherries, and we had a good laugh afterwards.
The real feud came several years later when Lauren had been joined by an adopted cousin with the same addiction for chocolate covered cherries. (I told you our family was blended.) Not long into the family celebration with all grandchildren, in-laws, and children present, a member of the parent generation wanted to know where the chocolate covered cherries had gone before he had any. Sleuthing revealed that few relatives had more than one or two until they got to Lauren and Hannah who could not be persuaded to reveal their number, mumbling words like “a few,” or “several.”
Hannah and Lauren won’t both be here for Christmas, but since they turned up for Thanksgiving, I gave a preview that seems to have met expectations once again.
And if you should think chocolate covered cherries are the only cause of argument at a Butler family Christmas, you haven’t seen anything until we begin to discuss whether the fudge should or should not have nuts.