Little Men with Hats
Green paint peels under my fingers. Tiles crack under my feet. Walls crumble under my touch. It feels deserted, lonely, lifeless. I blink back the tears and close my eyes. It all goes away.
+ + +
I’m eight. I open the green rusty gate and run along the pathway decorated with flowers and colorful pots. I hear chickens and bees buzzing. This is my second home, Pavel Banya, a little village in the center of Bulgaria. In my line of sight are Grandma and Grandpa with their arms wide open for me. I skip through the garden maze and crash into their embrace. The silky touch of my Grandma’s purple shirt against my cheek, the rugged sleeves of my Grandpa’s brown jacket on my back. It feels like an eternity since I last saw them.
I smell honey and cinnamon and instinctively follow it inside to the small kitchen table next to the windows. A silver tray of happiness waits for me on the table. The chovecheta s kalpacheta is how my Grandma called them or in English little men with hats. As a child I didn’t know they were simple honey cookies. For me they carried magic.
I help set up the table, eying the chovecheta, but I know Grandma is watching me. We place the tomato and cucumber salad with Bulgarian white cheese, the fried zucchini, the sausages with yellow cheese, the baked potatoes and the steaks on the table, leaving just enough space in the middle for a vase of flowers from the garden. I am so eager to eat the cookies that I barely touch all the food my grandma made. I am saving myself for the grand finale. By the time we reach dessert, everyone is full. The cookies are all mine.
Over the years I’ve gone back to Pavel Banya, to the garden maze and to the cookies that gave me so much pleasure. As much as I asked her, she did not want to reveal the recipe. It was her signature dish, the trick up her sleeve to bring the whole family home.
Although she hid the recipe, I always insisted that we bake more cookies together after I arrived. My grandpa took me to the beehives and showed me how to extract honey. We went to the dusty storage room to get the homemade plum jam. Then, my Grandma and I sat down and prepared the cookies. I usually got carried away in the mixing, folding and shaping. I ended up covered in flour and eating the dough with a big spoon. Everyone knows that the best part of making cookies is that sticky mix on the big spoon.
After the cookies came out of the oven, we glued two together with jam. I covered the upper half of the cookie with walnuts, which represented the hat, and I drew eyes and a smile with chocolate cream. I tried to make every face different, like every little man was alive.
I gave life to the cookies, made up stories about them. And they gave life to my creativity and imagination. The little men with hats ignited my love for stories. They were not only the most magical treat that my Grandma made, but an inspiration.
And a cherished memory.
Now I am a university student, back at my grandma’s house once again. I smell the tray of honey and cinnamon under my nose. I open my eyes, but there are no cookies in sight. The big white house is falling apart under my feet. The house of my grandma and grandpa is being sold. In a week someone else will own it.
Time does not care about grandparents or houses or cookies. But what happens, when I close my eyes, will always be mine. The garden maze, the green door, the white lace curtains, the smell of little honey men and the loving embrace of my grandparents.
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