“Get your fingers outta there! You’ll give yourself a tapeworm,” Grammy exclaimed at the icing’s invaders.

 

Little voices giggled through lips that licked sticky, saccharine fingers; they knew she was bluffing.

 

Grammy couldn’t help but smile to herself at the white-glazed cheeks and baby teeth sure to rot out if they didn’t fall out first. In a milder tone, she said, “I used to make this for your daddy when he was your age, you know.”

 

Her granddaughters licked their lips and kept smiling out their intense sugar-high.

 

“He used to sneak a taste, too,” Grammy continued with a wink. “Although he usually waited until I’d at least added the cinnamon to the sugar, for cryin’ out loud.” She raised a hand to her hip with elbow dramatically akimbo in mock offense.

 

More giggles perforated the warm, thickly sweet air.

 

“Cinnamon’s good for ya, you know,” Grammy asserted. “It used to be a gift to ancient royalty.” Her upper arm flapped as she stirred with intensity. “Now, I’m not sayin’ you can go and eat a dozen cinnamon rolls a day, but at the very least ya can appreciate the flavor that the spice adds to the batter.”

 

The little ones smacked their lips and nodded with sparkling eyes. When their grandmother had finally kneaded the dough and left it to rise for a spell, they knew the best part was yet to come.

 

“Ready?” Grammy asked.

 

“Ready!” the kids screamed.

 

Both little ones received their respective balls of dough and rolled them into logs beneath their little palms. With unusual focus, they lined each dough log with the cinnamon-sugar mixture and rolled them into buns.

 

“Very good!” Granny beamed. “Now let’s add ‘em to the baking pan and blow on our pinwheels for good luck.”

 

Wooooo went their streams of air as they all blew on their buns of dough, indeed picturing them as pinwheels spiralling in the breeze.

 

Grammy opened the oven door with one floral-mitted hand and inserted the pan with the other. “There they go!”

 

She leaned against the countertop awhile to just watch her grandkids press their hands against the warm oven door and their noses against the oven window as it glowed with the magic of belly-filling delights. She never minded Windexing those smudges away.

 

After a time, she said, “Okay, then. How ‘bout you two lil’ rascals come over here and lick the rest of the batter off the spoon.”

 

Little fingers invaded once again as, behind them, the cinnamon rolls started to turn a golden, honeyed-brown.

 

*****

 

“Darling, are you all right? Staring at that swirl hasn’t hypnotized you, has it?”

 

The woman laughed, still looking at the golden, honeyed-brown bowl in her lap. “No, it’s fine. I was just remembering…”

 

Sundays together, just the three of them. Cinnamon spicing the air like pixie dust. Sticky fingers, licking the spoon.

 

The woman laughed again. “Dear thing. She’s been remembering, too.”

 

“There’s a card here in the box it shipped in, still unopened. How’d you know it was from her?”

 

“It couldn’t be anyone else.” The woman raised the bowl to eye level and blew on it. Wooooo went her stream of air over the smooth, spiraling surface.

 

Her husband cocked a brow. “Is it dusty?”

 

“Ha! No. I was just…” She reached and plucked the card from the tissue paper to read it——the script was someone else’s, but the words were undoubtedly that of the sender: