tubber ware.

back when she was younger and everything was still good between them, her mother baked nearly every cookie in her recipe book around christmas. she baked for her clients, her friends, and the majority of her extended family. the little girl would try each one of them except the ones she knew contained mint. to her, eating mint flavored things was like eating toothpaste. there were always at least two tubber wares full of cookies in the house for the two weeks before the 25^th.

when the little girl got bigger and went to college and started the painful process of becoming an adult, her family back in that old farm house dropped weight like bowling balls on a diet that entailed eating nothing but fruit one day and nothing but meat the next, and cut out all sugar. when she came back home on a school break, her mother was so skinny from the diet and so tan from the sun-therapy depression treatments that hair and clothing were the only indication of human life. and for the first time ever, there were no christmas cookies in tubber ware.

“things have changed around here,” she said, looking at her brother's slim face and loose pants, noticing the dog's crusted over eye and the way he no longer greeted her at the back door, but rather slept deafly on the couch and, like the rest of the family, looked up sleepily when she showed him she was home.