Cookie memories.................................

This afternoon is the big "Dog Days of Summer" up town and I made some cookies to give out to people when they visit my petition table. As I was baking, I was thinking about how each of the three types of cookies I made had a special memory attached to them.

The molasses cookie recipe came to me from a former home care client. It was a cold winter day and I went into the warmth of the home as well as to the wonderful aroma of baking cookies. Eventually we got around to working on the therapy on his knee, post knee replacement, but first came a couple of wonderful, warm molasses cookies. YUM! The client's wife was gracious enough to share her recipe with me and when she gave it to me at my next visit, she had written on the top of it, "Molasses cookies from the White House." White was their last name, and each time I get out the recipe to use it I can't help but smile at the title and in memory of the sweetness of the couple.

I also made sugar cookies today. This recipe has been in my collection for almost twenty-eight years. My oldest daughter turned twenty-eight on the fourth of July, and being the first grandchild of the group my first husband and I hung around with she had many surrogate grandmas when she was a baby. One of them gave her (this recipe of) sugar cookies decorated with pumpkin faces for her first and second Halloween. I have a picture of her eating the cookies (the second year around since she was still on total breast milk her first Halloween) but I don't need to take it out and look at it, because the picture of her sitting on the kitchen table, next to the pumpkin we had carved for her, dressed in the little lion costume I had made for her, happily munching on her pumpkin cookies, is engraved on my mind where I can look at it anytime I choose.

The third type of cookie I made today was traditional chocolate chip. Who doesn't have a memory of either baking or eating hot out of the oven, gooey chocolate chip cookies? I used to make chocolate chip cookies for my instructors when I was working on my child development degree at the local community college. I would bake up a batch every couple of weeks and make the rounds during office hours to pick their brains about class subjects or just general life topics. Back then I was still molding who and what I wanted to be and to me these people seemed to have their lives all together and were living a dream life. Of course, looking back on it, I know my perceptions were only what I wanted to see and they probably had totally different ideas of how things were in their lives. Regardless, I enjoyed all of those chats and they really helped me to grow as a person.

Funny, how the simple act of stirring up a batch of cookies ended with much more than just dough being stirred up. It is good to look back once in a while from where we came, check in, and make sure we are heading where we want to be heading. Even if it isn't where we thought we would want to be going once upon a time.