Strudel Makes the Woman

Grandpa Max loved butter cookies. He liked his Chivas Regal from a heavy cut-glass decanter, but the little butter cookies with coarse sugar sprinkles just had to come from a can.

His pleasures were simple born from a childhood of poverty, and his need for tidiness bordered on compulsion. Grandpa did all the ironing and packed all the suitcases, each layer of clothes sandwiched between tissue paper and sheets of plastic recycled from the dry cleaners. It was Grandpa Max who would stand in my bedroom like a soldier and teach me how to reassemble my dissheveld sheets and blanket into a proper bed. I had sleep in my eyes and my Barbie nightgown was twisted around me like a frenzied static sock.