I woke up Friday morning with a bit of a sore throat, but didn’t think much of it as I so seldom get really sick. Unfortunately, “seldom” is slightly different from “never,” and this has proved to be one of those rare occasions when a bit of a sore throat turns into something more. On Saturday I woke up with such a painful throat that I could barely speak, and a stuffed-up nose, a fever, and a horrible sinus headache had been added to my list of complaints. I felt so bad, even, that I had to cancel the fika I’d been planning with our friends from out of town whom we haven’t seen in what feels like forever. We keep making plans to get together, but one or another thing seems always to pop up and keep us from following through with those plans.

Despite feeling like death warmed over this weekend, I managed to put the finishing touches on all my holiday gifts and to make a veritable plenitude of candy. I’ve hand-rolled so many bonbons and truffles over the past couple of days that I actually have bruises on my palms that hurt if I rub my hands together. I was unexpectedly reminded of my maternal grandmother when I was making all that candy. She always used to make mountains of bonbons for the holidays when I was a kid, and I had somehow forgotten about that until I was making a similar candy myself. My grandma died this past May, and though we weren’t close after I grew up and I hadn’t seen her for a few years before she died, I could feel her with me, in some way, as I dipped chocolates at a kitchen table in a country she had never seen, in the midst of a life I’m sure she could never have imagined for me.