Freshly Baked Cookies

There is nothing in the world like a chocolate chip cookie fresh out of the oven.

As I'm sure many middle-class kids do, I have many a beloved childhood memory of baking chocolate chip cookies with my mom. In my case, it also involves my big sisters, some kids my mom babysat, and a set of matching aprons with the biggest one reading "I bring home the dough" and the smallest one reading "I EAT the cookies!" Those memories also involve the fact that my mom's chocolate chip cookies were the absolute best in the world.

Then came eighth grade, when I baked some chocolate chip cookies for my uncle. Weeks later, my mom went to my aunt and uncle's house and was surprised to find the cookies not only still in existence--they never last more than a few days in our house--but still perfectly delicious when dunked in a little coffee. She decided I had surpassed her cookie-baking skill, and who was I to argue? From then on, when cookies needed to be baked, it fell to me to bake them.

Fast-forward to the end of this past semester of college, when I started baking cookies to bring home every time I came home from school. I bought a lovely cookie jar just for the cause, and my cookies became an expected, much-appreciated treat, and of course I gave a repeat performance in honor of my big sister coming in from California and my future-brother-in-law coming in from Pennsylvania. (They came in at the same time. This was only one round of cookie-baking.)

Well, last week, Daddy had a little accident on the motorcycle (and by "a little accident," I mean "half a second away from catastrophic," but that's for another post) and fractured his left shoulder blade. Now he can't work, he's in a lot of pain, and he's crawling the walls with boredom. The obvious solution? Bake cookies, of course.

The magic started just as I was adding the flour. Mom came downstairs, gasped, and grinned to see what I was doing. Then, of course, she picked out a little finger-full of dough to eat.

Moments later, the chocolate chips were in, and suddenly the beater and spatula were no longer needed. "Dad, which one do you wanna lick?" He chose neither, thinking I would still need the spatula, and he grabbed a spoon. Mom picked out some more dough with the knife I'd used to level off flour and sugar. I got to lick the beater. And Dad grabbed another spoon. "Don't even bother cooking it. We'll just eat it like it is," Mom teased.

But mere moments after I took the first batch out of the oven, Dad was off the couch.

"Oh, you've got some done already?"

"Yup. Fresh out of the oven."

"That's when they're best. When they're nice and mushy..." He picked up a cookie and took a nice, chocolatey bite. "Mmm... MMM..." I didn't have to see his face to know how much he was enjoying that cookie.

So once I had the next batch in the oven, I took one of the fresh cookies upstairs to where Mom was doing some ironing. "I brought you a present," I said. The look on her face alone was priceless, but I watched her eat the cookie, every "Mmm..." almost exactly the same as Dad's. (They've been married almost 33 years, so yeah, they've grown a little similar.)

A few minutes later, I finally had a fresh-out-of-the-oven cookie. And you know what? As wonderful as that cookie was, I enjoyed seeing my parents enjoy their cookies more than I enjoyed my own cookie. And just now, when my brother-in-law walked in the door and I greeted him with the announcement that there were fresh cookies, he absolutely lit up, which made me light up.

My Children's Literature professor pointed out several examples in children's books where food = love. I know that will all the eating disorders and obesity problems in the country, that's a dangerous equation. But the difference these cookies made today? If writing doesn't work out, I might consider opening a bakery. When simple sweets light up a person's face... Well, there's something to be said for giving someone a bite of happiness, isn't there?

The Stuff of Memories

Sometimes childhood memories aren't actually from childhood.

I've always loved fireworks, but I don't think I realized how much I loved them until I went three years without them. You see, in the summer of 2004, I was on a youth group trip up in Washington. I believe we were on Mount Rainier on the Fourth, and we didn't really acknowledge Independence Day very much at all. Then in 2005 I was home, but the fireworks were rained out. In 2006, I was in Israel, so we spent our 4th of July swimming in the Dead Sea instead of seeing a parade and dancing on a boat instead of watching fireworks. So when I was home again in 2007, I was ridiculously excited for the fireworks... and then they were so low, we could barely see them. Huge disappointment, but then I had a great view of fireworks multiple times a year from my dorm room window for the next two school years.

But enough on that tangent. This weekend has been a family reunion on my dad's side of the family, which means that even though some people had already left town and some people stayed back at my aunt's house, our walk to the fireworks was a parade of 23 people. It's a 1.25 mile walk that seemed like an impossible feat when I was little.

Usually, it's cool enough by nighttime that we need to change into jeans and long sleeves before the fireworks. We also have to coat ourselves with bug spray. This year, out of habit, we did the same. Well--most of us kept the short sleeves, because it was still pretty warm. It turns out the jeans were a bad idea. Between heat and humidity, we weren't exactly chilled on the way to or from the fireworks. "Melting" is more the word I would use.

The walk that was so impossible when I was five is a piece of cake at 21. We've gotten used to keeping a pretty good pace on the way to fireworks, but with all the out-of-towners in town this year, we suddenly had three-year-old legs at the back of the line. At first, the front group (because 23 people will always turn into three or four groups on a long walk) kept slowing down and stopping to make sure the back group would be able to find the way, but eventually we just made sure they had someone with them who know how to get there.

It's funny how I have more memories about the walks to and from the fireworks than I do about the fireworks. Fireworks really don't look much different from year to year, and conversations don't usually extend too far beyond "Ooh" and "Ahh." But some of my best cousin-bonding-time has been on those walks. From this year, I'll remember that on the way there, my sister's fiancé got the whole front group singing a few lines of "Living on a Prayer," which sounded way better than "Happy Birthday" earlier in the evening, and that he improvised a song about my oldest sister; and I'll remember that on the way back, my brother-in-law (and later my sister) attacked me with a nice warm blanket.

And this year, I'll remember the fireworks, too.

I watched as we spread out half a dozen blankets that somehow still weren't quite enough for all of us and my cousins' kids bought the glow-sticks we've long outgrown--which, by the way, have gotten way cooler. I stretched out next to my cousin, and the fireworks appeared off to the side instead of straight ahead, much closer than I ever remember them being. When they got high enough, it looked like the sparks were coming down right on top of us. I could feel some of those big booms in my entire chest.

And then we realized that these tiny bugs on us were actually ashes. Yeah... We've never been that close before.

I asked my cousin if she remembered when we had names for all the different kinds of fireworks. She did, and even remembered a bunch of the names. I'd only remembered one name, and while she struggled to think of what she was missing, she said, "Geez, ask me to remember five years back, why don'tcha."

Five years? Was that right? That had been the summer before seventh grade, and here I am about to start my fourth year of college... "That was almost ten years ago." We marveled at the passage of time, felt old, acknowledged that we're not really old, and decided to feel young instead.

Those fireworks left me with a great big grin, as they often do. And as we all lay there being amazed at those explosions in the sky, I thought about how perfect it was to have so much of our huge family from all over the country right here in one place. It was good, and the kind of simplicity that I think adulthood tends to forget about.

So while I'm not a child anymore, I count last night as a very sweet childhood memory.