Snowflakes and Coffee Cakes by Joanne DeMaio

Author:Joanne DeMaio
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Joanne DeMaio
Published: 2013-11-19T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

VERA LIFTS THE TABLETOP CAROUSEL from the box in the storage room and gasps at her find. How many Decembers did her mother bring her to the Christmas Barn all those years ago? The family tradition was to find a new ornament for their tree; but for Vera, it was to visit these magical Christmas swans. She’d walk through the big old barn with all its festive holiday décor until she found them. Because she’d seen swans before, in the salt marsh at Stony Point, and loved to watch them. That’s why these birds drew her, the glimmering, sparkling carousel swans spinning slowly around a painted scene of three ships. One swan would slide past, then another, each neck gracefully arched with a small balsam wreath and red bow decorating them elegantly.

And that’s where she’d stay until she felt her mother’s touch on her back, felt her breath as she bent low to tell Vera how pretty the carousel birds were, that the white sparkles looked like snow on their feathers. And they’d watch the swans together until her mother took her mittened hand and finally led her through the store to leave, holding a red shopping bag with a new ornament inside.

Memories, life, they’re one and the same. Because Vera holds the carousel up now and what she remembers is this: Being that young girl with silky blonde hair falling across her blue wool coat, her head turned back, her eyes still watching the swans peacefully swimming, swimming, around and around and around the sea, forever beautiful, forever suggesting something she didn’t know then, but maybe sensed, about the eternal rhythms of the sea, and of life.

She opens a slip of paper tucked in with the carousel. Not For Sale is handwritten across it, underlined twice. For Children’s Display Only! So the previous owner understood how important the swans were. If she’d kept it just for Vera, she’ll never know. But looking at them now brings her again to the edge of the sea, to a simple peace conveyed by the white birds.

Until a loud jangling bell reminds her exactly where she actually is and what she’s doing as Jingles knocks over a small box from a tabletop, jumps down and soccer-pats a sleigh bell across the wide barn board floor. He’s a blur of soft, fluffy motion that nearly trips her sister when she walks in with two large boxes tied closed with a thin piece of string.

“Oh! Jingles, you rascal!” Brooke says to the cat. “You scared the daylights out of me.”

Vera picks up the swan carousel and gently sets it back in its box.

“Yoo-hoo!” Brooke calls out. “Vera?”

“Back here,” Vera answers, walking out of the storage room.

Brooke sets her boxes on the old checkout countertop near the door and begins opening them. “I’m glad I caught you. The library bake sale is this weekend and you have to sample these and tell me which ones to make.”

Vera looks into the boxes laden with jam-filled coffee cake muffins, some strawberry, some raspberry, blueberry, and peach.

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