Simone Weil wrote, "The beautiful is a carnal attraction which keeps us at a distance and implies a renunciation. This includes the renunciation of that which is most deep-seated, the imagination. We want to eat all the other objects of desire. The beautiful is that which we desire without wishing to eat it. We desire that it should be."

There was this gingerbread house. My mother made it for Christmas when I was eight. She baked wall, roof, and chimney-sized pieces of gingerbread, waited for them to cool, and then cemented them together with chocolate frosting. On the roof she spread vanilla frosting for snow, which hung over the edges in sugar icicles. She nestled red, green, pink and yellow candies in the snow-icing. A dark chocolate bar served as the front door. In the yard she placed gingerbread elves and evergreen trees with colored-sugar lights. When it was finished, she placed it on a table in the living room. The table was flanked by white and gold angels that were music boxes. One held a flute and one a mandolin. They both played "Silent Night." Behind the table was a grove of dwarf-sized Norfolk pine trees. The trees were strung with tiny white lights, like stars. In broad daylight the gingerbread house was a thing of beauty. But at night, bathed in those tiny starlights, it took my breath away.

Along with the house, my mother baked about six dozen gingerbread cookies and some of those shortbread cookies with glazed cherries in the middle. "That gingerbread house is for looking not for eating," she said. I understood. And even though I was a child with a mouthful of sweet-teeth, I was not tempted to eat even one morsel of that enchanted house--until one night, several days before Christmas.

I remember sitting on the floor, as I had every evening of the previous week, with construction paper, glitter, paste, magic markers, and crayons spread out in front of me. I had work to do. I was making New Year's Eve hats and favors for a party I wouldn't be allowed to stay up for. Anyway, I was parked there with my art project and a plateful of Christmas cookies and, as well as feeling slightly resentful about the party, I was bored. By this time all the Christmas specials were long over, plus the hats weren't turning out well (most were dotted with big lumps of paste, others were shedding glitter) and all the pictures on the advent calendar looked the same to me.

I recall sitting there in a kind of Christmas stupor, staring at that wondrous gingerbread house and feeling an eight-year-old's version of holiday burnout. At that point, the house had been around for a good two weeks. No longer could I picture good-natured elves toiling away at their workbenches inside, assembling toys, and singing jolly elf songs. Now when I peered through one of the fragrant windows, all I saw was darkness. Viewing the house from the outside was frustrating. I wished I were small enough to open that chocolate-bar door and stroll right into the center of the spicy living room. There was a fireplace. (I know because the house had a chimney.) I imagined a colorful spun rug on the floor, and maybe a rocking chair. I would sit on the rug. Imagining this made me feel very peaceful.

But before my peaceful mind knew what it was doing, my hand shot out and broke off part of the chimney. I bit down on the snow frosting and gingerbread, nearly breaking a tooth in the process. To my disappointment, I did not taste icing and gingerbread so much as brick dust and mortar. That was the moment at which my mind re-attached itself to my hand. I got scared and shoved the half-chewed piece of chimney into the soil of a nearby poinsettia. Then I washed my hands and told my mother I was going to bed.

That night I dreamed of eating an entire stained glass window from our church. When I opened my mouth to sing hymns, blood came out. It wouldn't stop. It flowed down the aisles of the church and up to the pulpit.

The next morning I was sure I was going to get it. But when I came downstairs my mothers said, "The angels are broken. Do you think you might have wound them more tightly than usual?" I told her I hadn't played the angels for a while--and it was true, I hadn't. I waited for her to say something about the chimney. But she didn't. She just got out the broom and started sweeping the kitchen floor.

This unnerved me.

I sneaked into the living room and surveyed the damage. The chimney looked as thought it had been ravaged by some ferocious blizzard. As I stared at it, I became more and more anxious that my mother hadn't mentioned it. Maybe she hadn't noticed? But she had to have seen it--she turned out the lights on the trees next to it every night. And besides, she'd said the angels were broken.

Maybe the angels had seen, and maybe what they had seen had taken their voices away.

Days passed, and my mother never mentioned the damaged chimney. I dug up the dirt around the poinsettia and searched for the chimney piece. It was gone. My father took the angels to a repair shop, where he was told that it would cost a lot to fix them, so he just brought them home, where they remained mute witnesses to my crime. Christmas came and went. My parents' New Year's Eve party came and went, minus my famous construction-paper-and-glitter hats, which I'd demolished in a fit of pique the day before the party. I tore up all twenty of them and scattered the colored bits of paper all over the living room floor. My mother was upset that I'd destroyed my lovely hats. I smiled and made brash, unrepentant remarks as I picked up the shreds and shoved them into a trash bag. I waited for my mother to yell at me. But she didn't say a word.