Family

Christmas package arrived from home today!

I'm amazed as Sis told me they only mailed it a few days ago. It took me only 2 1/2 hours to completely open it (winks at Sis) and was worth every minute.

This is always a high point of the season for me. Not only is it a link to my family back home, but they always tuck in goodies that are much harder to get "on the Mainland" than on the Island.

Purity Foods is a company established in 1924 in Newfoundland. For all Newfoundlanders and expats, their candies, biscuits, crackers, cookies, breads, syrups and other goodies are the taste of home.

In the bags on the left are Purity Kisses, big yummy gobs of toffee (think saltwater toffee, but flavoured differently) that come in rum and butter, butterscotch, molasses, and, oddly, banana and coconut flavours (do you suppose the latter two have their roots in the Caribbean rum/fish trade out of Newfoundland?). On the right are Jam Jams, delicious moist gingery, molassesy cookie sandwiches with strawberry jam in between. Purity Foods are "homely" in the original sense of the word, old-fashioned and plain and comforting and home-like, with echoes of our English and Irish heritage, and they are a Christmas treat indeed.

Plus there was also a card and gifts for us and for the kitties from their Newfoundland canine cousins, and a letter from Spike to the Ronniecats (man, his spelling is worse than Mojo's, but he is an entertaining author).

Earlier this week I got a card and photos and a letter from my older brother, whose story is complicated and who I don't write about often and who is a post all his own. From him and his wife and his two beautiful children, grown adults now. I'm so proud of him.

Merry Christmas, family. Merry Christmas to all who are far from home and who wait for the package, the card, the letter, that reassures you we are still, after all, family, and not very far apart at all.

ronnie