All I Want for Christmas

Some things on my list are tangible — some never were.

Had you asked earlier, I might have said a uniformed exterminator with a big green bow on his cap. But since my husband, Dan, caught and released our kitchen mice— driving each tiny one, in the car, to the woods nearby —and my Sis already got me pink fur Ugg slippers, these are my picks. (Yes, I am married to a tree hugger who once called Animal Rescue over a chipmunk, and my sister asked for my color choice.)

1. Books. I heard these authors on our local NPR radio station. Each book is escapist reading during a sequestered pandemic. Always Home: A Daughter’s Recipes & Stories by Fanny Singer (her mother is chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse) is peppered with gorgeous black-and-white photos. The second, We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence, by Becky Cooper, hangs on the mysterious 1969 murder of a Harvard graduate student. (Sorry, I know this is sugar-plum Christmastime, but real-life crimes can be compelling.) Caveat: Rather than feed the beast — blue Amazon vans constantly crisscross our streets — I asked Dan and our daughter, Annie, to order the books from independent Watchung Booksellers, right in town.
2. A gift card. But again from a local business, to help keep it afloat– maybe Howell, which stocks a French-inspired brand of oversized, hand-spun linen dish towels ($30) in cheery ginghams* that make pot-scrubbing less of a drudge, and Irish cashmere and wool blankets and throws. Or Vesta Chocolate, for handcrafted lattes, pure…