WIDE MEADOWS: WATCHING GRANDMA COOK ON CHRISTMAS DAY (A CONTINUING SERIES)

Lou and I, who have seen to it that the wood box is filled and spilling over with good dry split wood, pulled from underneath the pile, are allowed to lean our elbows on the table and watch the proceedings.

Into the big blue crock Grandma drops a cup of butter, and over this she sifts a cup of sugar. Then, with the big cooking spoon, she whips and beats, mashes, spins and cajoles it into a light, fluffy mass, the color of the creamy white honeysuckles on the summer porch. At this point on lesser occasions she would poke a spoonful of the sugary concoction into two drooling mouths, but not today!

Then come the eggs, five or six, broken deftly on the edge of the crock and spilled over the contents. Then again the beating process, even more vigorous than before. The withered skin at Grandma's throat flaps back and forth, and her old hand, snarled from too much rheumatism, goes round so fast it is just a blur. The rickrack on her dust cap quivers and the batter grows lighter. Grandma does not measure her flour but grabs the sifter, puts in a certain amount of baking powder and salt, just so much flour, and proceeds to raise a fine white mist in, over, and around the cook table. Flour, milk, flour, milk, until the right consistency is reached -- and only she knows this -- then the vanilla, more beating, and into the three pans. That's all the oven will hold at one time. After the first baking, two of the pans are pressed into the second shift.

How the cake comes out even and well rounded is a feat architectural more than culinary because the layers are invariably higher on one side than the other. This is due to the fact that the whole kitchen slopes a little downhill toward the river. But by alternating the high and low sides, putting a bigger daub of icing here, a smaller amount of coconut there, it goes upwards, plumb with the table, pleasing to the eye, and perfect to the palate.

After feasting our eyes on it the remainder of the morning, sitting in all its chaste glory in the center of the white-covered table and coming into even more tantalizing proximity during the meal, finally Grandpa would cross his knife and spoon neatly on his plate, pick up crumbs, real and imaginary, and after an eternity say, "Now, Ma, give me a slice of the riverward side of that cake."

It was inconceivable that when only a third of the ambrosial mass remained, leaning precariously like Pisa, that we would even again want anything to eat, especially so soon as suppertime. But appetites would be whetted by coasting down the hill back of the house, skating on the frozen river, or merely by taking a long tramp in the snow, to say nothing of the evening chores that would come later.

Taking a long tramp over the farm was Grandpa's favorite way of spending a Christmas afternoon. Sort of a busman's holiday since he had spent a good part of the spring, summer, and fall walking over the farm, but this day he set aside to check up on his little animals, as he called all the furry creatures that made their homes up and down the river valley.

Chances were Lou and I had found some new red knitted mittens and sock caps under the Christmas tree that morning, so, donning these, coats, and galoshes, we accompanied Grandpa on the trip.

He was a stern taskmaster in the matter of local animal lore. You couldn't really get a good grasp on things, he maintained, unless you knew the life that went about you in the fields and woods. "It'd be just like getting a new suit and never putting your hands in any of the pockets," he explained.

He spat in disgust when we confused the tracks of the possum with those of the coon and, I believe, he would have rapped us on the head had we mistaken the way the rabbit was going from his footprints in the snow.

So we came to look upon the little animals as part of the farm and felt secretly rich and inordinately proud when we found the hollow-tree home of some smelly skunk or knew where the possum had a nest of young. "You know the possums are no bigger than a pinto bean when they're born, don't you?" Grandpa demanded, which was his way of telling us, and, although we didn't know, we never forgot thereafter.

We knew at what hour to find the muskrat sunning on his sycamore snag, tracked hundreds of rabbits to their briar patches, and even found the mud slide of an otter once.

Adding something tangible to our knowledge, like finding a quail nest or a fox den, was just like having a new possession, and we weren't above bragging about it at school and elsewhere and using it for trading timber. Once I had canceled a debt of twenty-five sheets of slick tablet paper I owed for showing someone a chipmunk's burrow.

We even felt proprietary towards old "P.B.," the terrapin, although it was our neighbor, Paul Britt, who had carved his initials on the shell long ago. But he was found mostly on our place, poking his inquisitive head up among the dewberry vines, giving us a terrible start, or resting under a May apple umbrella. Then maybe in less than a week we'd run across him in the bluebells, way over in the far meadow. Sometimes a year would go by before we'd hear from him, then one night at supper Grandpa would report, "Ran across old P.B. today." It was like hearing from an old friend. We were interested in his perambulations.

So, on such a Christmas Day, if we were blessed with snow, we might find the dainty handprints of the mink, the larger ones of the coon and possum, the triangular tracks of the rabbit, and the delicate embroidery stitches of the field mice.

"Un-huh," Grandpa would say, satisfactorily, when he came across them, and looking on, Lou and I had the feeling that all was going well. Running ahead to a smooth, snow-deep place in the meadow, we would lie flat on our backs, sweep our arms in semicircles, making "angel" tracks of our own, and wait to see what Grandpa would do when he came across them. "And this, " he'd say in heavy reverence, "is where the angels slept last night!"

December twilight came on fast. At the hour of four we began to close the day. Long since the icicles had ceased to drip and begun to grow thick and lengthy again, making a pretty fringe at the barn's eaves and around the roof of the chicken house.

There is warmth and life in the barn. Shaggy-haired cows low gently at the sound of milk buckets rattling, and horses make soft throaty sounds through their velvet nostrils. Barn cats crouch close to some convenient mouse hole that leads to hidden rooms within rooms where beady-eyed creatures make noises with favorite old corncobs and leave intricate patterns on the dusty floor.

The wind whistles around the corners, sifting snow about, and through it we see the lights from the kitchen where warmth and food await. For supper there are the dinner leftovers, plus the peach custard pudding. For this delectable dessert, Mama has put cookie crumbs in the bottom of the big corn-bread pan, poured on melted butter, and arranged peach halves in symmetrical rows. This is all buried under a cream custard and topped with nubby meringue, browned to golden perfection in the oven, and served generously in the gold-rimmed glass dessert dishes.

After supper we will go over our presents again. Perhaps Uncle Hayden has sent us some new records for the gramophone -- "The Preacher and the Bear," or "Moonlight in Jungleland," and we play them over and over. Lou and I fondle our gifts, a big red ladybug that winds up and crawls across the floor, some doll dresses, a scrapbook Lillian has prepared for us, flannelette and serge to go into winter clothes, and the big, rare oranges we keep laying aside, saving the best for last.

"Fill'er up again?" Dad asks, lifting the stove lid to one side and peering in.

Grandma yawns and reckons she's ready to turn in. We are not reluctant to follow suit for it has been a good day, and there is tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.