Helga, my aunt’s mother, spends roughly a million hours baking the most beautiful Christmas cookies you’ve ever beheld…not to mention the loveliest you’ve ever tasted. There are home-made-strawberry-jam-filled shortbread cookies lightly powdered with sugar, moon-shaped almond meal cookies that fall apart the moment they touch your tongue, simple butter cookies whose flavor matures with each passing day…Oh! What joy!
So you see, it was quite impossible (once we noted the where the mother-load was stashed) to stay clear of the cellar for too long. However, my seasoned grandparents-in-laws are not dumb…the stairs that lead to the basement are creaky and the door is squeaky. But when German Hildebrotle (the cookies) are the prize, these dangers must be risked. Unfortunately for us little mices, my grandmother-in-law neatly stacks all the cookies in rows, layering one row on top of another. So to steal a cookie inconspicuouly is well…quite impossible.
And so it was that after 10 years of relative peace (for my aunt Doro left the house 10 years ago) the Christmas Mouse returned…and with only three more days before I am again in that cozy little house in Kehl…I feel the Christmas Mouse in me beginning to stir…
