There are sounds and smells that are only associated with the Christmas season. A mixer running through the morning and then again through the evening is one of those sounds. First, in the morning, we run the mushrooms and cabbage through the grinder attachment to create two different pastes that will fill uszka and pierogi.

“I love uszka!” exclaims the Boy time and time again. Every time we have barszcz through the year, E asks if it’s going to be barszcz z uszkami.

“No, honey, that’s just Christmas Eve,” K responds patiently.

“Why?”

“Too much work.”

Once a year, though, it’s not too much work. It’s just enough work. After a couple of weekends of cleaning and several dishes to prepare over the coming days, a day making pierogi and uszka seems relatively insignificant.

But it is a lot of work. First, we saute the onions and the mushrooms while the sauerkraut bubbles away. It all gets strained and then _____ed. Then comes the tedious work: dumpling after dumpling, filled, folded, and pinched closed. More dough cut from the ever-dwindling ball, rolled flat, cut into circles, then again — filed, folded, and pinched. Filled, folded, pinched.

I head over and get a pinch of the mushroom/kraut miracle.

“G, you’re in my way,” K scolds.

The cleaning piles up during all that. A mountain of dishes that then gets leveled and remounded again and again.

Cycles within cycles. That’s what makes life comforting, its predictability at times. We spend so much of our time worrying about what’s coming that we long for those moments when what’s coming is what’s always come before.