THE PROMISE

THE PROMISE

Written by James D. Merrick , June 1, 2021

Come back with me to my first December in my very first home. Yes, of course, I had lived in other places, garages mostly, for all of my nine years. But this day signaled the start of the first Christmas I would celebrate in the first home my folks had ever owned. Beams of early morning sunlight had melted the frost on the kitchen’s windowpane, near where I sat. On any other day, I would have stared outside and marveled at Mom’s winter garden. I would have watched blackbirds fight for a position in the sunlight on the cables sagging across the spaces between telephone posts at the rear of the property. But that day was different. The golden orb’s warmth penetrated the pane and cozied into my shoulder blades as I reclined against the glass. On that day, I sat cross-legged on a padded chrome chair with my back to the curtainless kitchen window, my chin rested on the palm of my hand as I watched wide-eyed while Father busied himself at the counter. Dad was baking!

Sunlight glanced off the shiny white Formica table top and streamed across the shoulder-to-shoulder work space. It illuminated the knot of apron strings tied in a bow at my father’s back. One of his hands held the oven door ajar while the other reached inside to check the thermometer dangling from a hook. “Five minutes more,” he said, still staring at the gauge as a release of lung air parted his lips, marking his disappointment. He closed the door and brushed the damp palms of his hands across the front of his floral covering, as if from habit, then pivoted and smiled at me. “Waiting makes me jittery. How about you, Jimmy?”

He didn’t wait for my reply. If he had, I would have said I was filled with wonder as I watched him work in the kitchen for the first time. He continued pouring and mixing and rolling out dough with Mom’s apron tied around him, doing women’s work, I thought; compromising the blueprint he had created to make a man of me. I watched him shift left, from the stove to the side counter. His brown house slippers flip-flopped as he shuffled across the space. Under the bow of his flowered apron, his white XL t-shirt draped loosely over the waistband of his khaki pants. His graying brown hair hung in shingles against the back of his neck. As he worked, beads of sweat rode on his forehead. I couldn’t take my eyes off him as the hands that coached me to lace boxing gloves, rhythmically measured and sifted flour and powdered yeast, then added foam-topped dairy milk and folded in melted yellowy butter. As the creamy concoction stiffened, my father’s hands fashioned it into spheres of baseball-sized dough. And like Jeff Bridges, he hummed as he worked.

With the adroitness that seemingly came from experience, Dad continued with his tasks. From time to time, as if to ease my impatience, he turned and flashed me a confident smile. I continued to lean against the window, transfixed by my father’s actions. One at a time, he placed balls of the elastic goo on the flour-dusted counter top and flattened them into rectangular slabs about half an inch thick. He hummed as he shook cinnamon out of its perforated tin and onto the flattened dough while motes of rusty powder flitted in all directions, propelled by the ceiling fan. Some came to rest inside my nose where a sneeze catapulted them into the palm of my waiting hand. “God bless you,” Father said, without turning from his task. Like a well-trained masseuse, he continued to caress the dough. He pressed the reddish powder, glittery sugar crystals, and plump raisins into the surface of each yielding doughy mat and rolled the sweetened masses into long cylinders. Using a whetted kitchen knife, he sliced each rolled pad into precisely one-and-one-half-inch wide pinwheels.

Stretching on his tiptoes, he reached deep inside the cupboard over the refrigerator to retrieve a stack of oiled metal muffin tins. With a clean tea towel he wiped the twelve depressions of each pan and lined them up in precise rows at his workspace. If I had anticipated his next move, I would have remained calm, but when I saw it happen, my torso tipped forward. My lower lip flopped down and my left hand grasped the edge of my chair. With my eyes in a double take, I gawked as Dad proceeded to allow a measured amount of syrupy honey to dribble into the bottom of each cavity. Why is he doing that?, I thought. To each pocket he centered a maraschino cherry and added a sprinkling of chopped walnuts. Exactly twelve pinwheels went into the cavities of each pan, three rows of four, to cover the cherries, nuts, and sticky sweetness. At last, when I saw that the depressions had been filled, I leaned back in my chair and folded my hands in my lap. Dad set the pans aside to allow the dough to plump in the kitchen’s warmth.

Later, when Father opened the oven door and said, “It’s ready.” a wave of hot air flushed across me. He squeaked the pans across the stainless steel racks (metal against metal) into the preheated cavern, closed the oven door, and set the ringer to mark the time--twenty minutes. Waiting began again. Like a kid too long in the barber’s chair, my fingers drummed the table top, my shoes tapped the legs of my chair, and my teeth nibbled the inside of my cheeks. My mouth was a castle moat; spittle pooled around my tongue.

The ringer shattered my silence. With a good-luck knuckle rap on the top of the oven, Dad reached out with a pot holder and pulled down the door. A gush of sweet air ruffled the hair on his arm as the pot holder in his hand lifted the nearest pan from the metal rack and placed it on the stovetop to cool. The odor…no, a fragrance, wafted into my pre-adolescent nose and made its way to my brain in the most pleasant of ways, then set my stomach into gurgle mode. At the sight of the honey-soaked surfaces of the nut-studded rolls with the cherry on top, my eager tongue slid along the crevice between my lips as a smile lifted the corners of my mouth and a swallow of pent up saliva trickled down my throat.

At the appropriate moment, Dad ran the serrated edge of a dinner knife deftly around the rim of each depression, separating the gooey syrup from the metal walls. With a nimble flip, he somersaulted the pan up-side-down over a Pyrex baking dish. We waited for the rolls to drop…and waited…and waited! What’s taking so long? I anguished.

At last, the sweet cakes eased down onto the dish and allowed the tenacious honey to creep along the dish. Behold! Twelve honey-glazed and nut-studded rolls dazzled before us, a cheery cherries on the top of each.

It was then that Dad placed a hand lightly on my shoulder, gave me a love squeeze, and sat down beside me. With eyes dark and compelling and saddened by recollection, he said, “Jimmy, today I’m starting a tradition for our family in our new home. From now on, each December for as long as I am able, I promise to bake holiday rolls in honor of the men and women who fought on the Island of Luzon in the Philippines during World War II. I was the only army baker on the post at that time. The fifteen-hundred military personnel stationed there were unable to be with their families for the holidays. So, just as I’m doing with you and your mother today, I baked these special cinnamon rolls for those who were risking their lives for others like you and your mother. On that Christmas long ago, rolls like these put smiles on soldier’s faces and helped to soften their loneliness on the twenty-fifth.”

“Merry Christmas, my little man!” he said, as he scooted a plate of rolls in my direction.