House

I was 6 years old when I saw Santa Claus for the first time, and 8 when I got my first birthday present. I've only carved my first Halloween jack-o-lantern a few years ago. And this past weekend, I made my first gingerbread house. I'm a late bloomer when it comes to adapting to the American culture, but perhaps being exposed to all these things at a later age made me more acutely aware of the essence behind these activities and not just that Americans do them for fun.

My parents never told me stories about St. Nick, so my first exposure to him was when a man with a pillow-stuffed belly came to visit our kindergarten classroom in a red-felt suit and a fake white beard, dragging along a bulging cloth sack. I was a little wary of him but did as I was told and got in line with my classmates to wait my turn sitting on his knee. I hadn't learned much English by then, but this is what I remember: Santa asked me in a disguised, deep-throated voice, "And what do you want for Christmas, little girl?" I told him I didn't know. "Well, every child usually wants something for Christmas! And you'll get something--reach in Santa's bag there and pick out anything for yourself."

My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. McKinley, taught us that Christmas was a time of giving, but I didn't have anything to give my mom. So I rummaged through the bag, looked past all the toys, and picked out an oversized tortoise-shell-colored bangle bracelet. When I came home from school that day, my cousin who was in my same class (and whom I lived with at the time) sported a family of wooden ducks he could drag behind him on a string. I went up to my mom, took out the bracelet, and told her, "Mommy, I got this for you. For Christmas." Eight years later, when I rummaged for my missing socks in my parents' dresser, I saw the bracelet where my mother had saved it--nestled among mismatched cotton socks in their sock drawer.

The jack-o-lantern and gingerbread house, I didn't start doing until after I met Tung. He was the one who tangled his fingers in yarn and awkwardly held up two knitting needles in an effort to figure out the instructions with me when I first learned to knit; the one who scraped pumpkin guts onto newspapers and etched out the design on my pumpkins; the one who tolerated sticky icing oozing along his hands as we pieced together our first gingerbread house.

Here's the house with all the panels cemented together with icing.

Here's me icing the roof.

Here's Tung, two seconds after he happily said, "I'm so glad this ice-piping bag has held up..."

Here's our progress at the end of Day 1.

Day 2: Tung outlines the front door.

And viola! Our completed gingerbread house.

The back of the house, sporting a crooked, automatic garage door and a window. This is a gated community, so secure even the residents won't be able to sneak their own car out of the gumdrop fence.

Mmmm, gingerbread...

That colorful house evokes a warmth of spending time putting together something creative with loved ones, of the sweet smell of icing, and of laughing over busted icing bags, sagging windows, and crooked doors. Maybe someday soon, Tung and I could stop playing pretend, when we will finally be able to buy a house and create a home of our own.