Porcelain-white flour blanketed the counter. Little fingers made their marks in the cookie dough like ski tracks in the snow. I sat on the counter, adorned with a chef’s hat that I had made in preschool the week before. I was assisting my mother in making sugar cookies, a crucial, annual Christmas tradition when I was a kid. I watched her carefully and helped her as she measured out each cup or teaspoon of an ingredient. My weak, four-year old muscles struggled to stir the mortar-heavy cookie dough. I watched the ingredients unite, transforming from lumpy mortar to a thick paste. I would then watch my mother in quiet amazement as she deftly formed the molehills of dough into one, flawless ball.

Together, we would roll out the dough onto a floured surface. My mother gave me the rolling pin whenever the dough was pliable enough for my immature muscles to work with it. She always made sure to tell me what she was doing as she was doing it and made sure to include me in the process. “Good job, Courtney,” she would say in her sweet, angel-like voice. “Keep rolling out the dough just like that.” I felt special and capable. Everything my mom did seemed perfect to me-the roundness of ball of dough, the perfect circle she would create as she rolled it out, the golden color of the cookies as they left the oven. I felt that she trusted me not to ruin this perfection. I was my mom’s little helper, and I was proud to be nicknamed her “countertop kid.”

On our kitchen table sat an array of cookie cutters. Looking at the shapes of Santa Claus, a Christmas tree, a reindeer, and a snowman, I imagined a winter wonderland where it was Christmas all year and where everything was eternally jolly. I carefully cut out each cookie, not wanting to break the present bag off of Santa, the antlers off of a reindeer, or the hat off of a snowman-not wanting to ruin their perfect, private existence that took place somewhere in the North Pole.

My dreams of this secret wonderland were interrupted by clamor coming from the door leading into the house. Boots stomped on the hardwood floor like a mustang’s hoof on rough terrain. Zippers unzipped simultaneously, releasing children from their suffocating, stuffy, snowsuits. Kids from my mom’s daycare paraded noisily, like young children do, through the door of our kitchen. Their jackets were blanketed with white quilts of snow dandruff and their noses bore the rouge color of Rudolph’s infamous muzzle. Mugs of hot cocoa waited for them on the counter, ready to warm and comfort them as a fire warms and comforts brave mountaineers. Rejuvenated from the hot cocoa, everyone was ready to help with the best part of making the sugar cookies.

Dandelion-golden cookies, barren without their decorative covers, begged to be frosted. My mother’s ceramic bowls were filled with an array of Christmas colors: pea -green, lipstick-rouge, lemonade yellow, and school paper-white. Sprinkles of numerous shapes, sizes, and colors were available for the kids to decorate their cookies, or in some cases, the floor and table. The kids laughed and talked, reaching over and under each other as they scrambled to create their careless masterpieces. Frosting disappeared from the bowls as red snowmen, green reindeer, and yellow trees were frosted and as intermittent licks of the sweet, sugary, frosting were taken. Soon, cookie sheets were adorned with the frosted and decorated cookies, ready to be packaged up and taken home by each child.

Ready for a new activity, the children dispersed to either the living room to watch Christmas specials on the television, or to the playroom to have fun with Barbie. I stayed in the kitchen. I was happy to be in the messy room, which was strewn with rainbow sprinkles, globs of frosting, crusty utensils, and half-empty mugs of abandoned hot cocoa. Making Christmas cookies was a special occasion for me, evoking all the feelings of warmth and festivity that the holiday makes one feel. More than anything, I loved being in the kitchen with my mom, assisting her from the countertop and feeling her love for me as she included me in all she did. I was also pleased to give cookies to the kids to take with them, so that they could bring some of the love and joy from our own home to theirs. I sat on the countertop of our kitchen to view the remnants of the cookie making and to experience the happiness it generated. I was a part of that eternally jolly wonderland.