Day 3: Annette Snyder

Here’s a little story I wrote for my grandmother one year for Christmas. Every family has their own holiday traditions I wanted to show her how important the traditions she and my grandfather started were to me.

Grammie’s Christmas Table
By Annette Snyder

We fit around one table, elbow to elbow.
Tiny silverware rested aside fancy china plates garnished with a real cloth napkins and crystal wine glasses.
We offered God due credit for a fine year, a healthy family, and a wonderful meal. Laughter and grand conversation passed with fish and hollandaise sauce. Quiet bits of wisdom and boisterous halleluiahs rang above tender teasing as we fought over the last bowl of fish soup, the last dollop of snow pudding.
Around the tree, the family talked and divided bright packages, the colorful wrappings carelessly tossed about. Ceremonially buried in the crumpled paper amid howling infant protest was the youngest of the family while generations gathered for a photograph.
Those too young yawned and snuggled into bed while the remaining drove the snow covered street to church for midnight mass. We listened and celebrated the story of Christ’s birth.
After mass, we gathered home for a feast of cheese and crackers, and card games won merely with cleverness.

Faces reflected the passage of time. Babies replaced treasured souls, though the treasured souls remained smiling over us, silent hallelujahs echoing. No longer elbow to elbow, we filled an entire building with our laughter and grand conversation as we offered God due credit for a fine year, a healthy family, and a wonderful meal. The fish soup remained and we fought over the last bowl, the last dollop of snow pudding.
Extensions of Robert, Joseph, and the others, the generations in the picture changed though equally as impressive due to their rich heritage laced with integrity.
We listened and celebrated the story of Christ’s birth.
And, we gathered for cheese and crackers, and card games won merely with cleverness around Grammie’s Christmas Table.



Blurb: Economics shouldn’t play a part in love. For Marie Packard, fast food worker and single mom, it does. Will her choice be financial security with debonair, action film star, Ellis Donifan or emotional happiness with Ben Sutter, appealing limousine driver?


Excerpt:

It was Friday night at Rangers Barbeque in the city of Walter. At just over seventy thousand residents, the town could hardly be considered a metropolis, but Walter was the
biggest town Marie ever lived in and the restaurant was busy enough to cause a half an hour wait seating customers.
Marie looked at her watch. It was six thirty. She got to work for her double shift at seven that morning much to the discontent she felt when her alarm clock buzzed two hours
before. As Kitchen Manager, it was her job to cover for workers on leave or for some who didn’t show up for assignments and, unfortunate as it was, both situations occurred on
Friday more often than not.

Available Now: Drive Thru www.whiskeycreekpress.com

Annette Snyder
http://annettesnyder.atspace.com
Fifty Authors From Fifty States Blog
www.annettesnyder.blogspot.com
www.growne.com