Cookie Days

Start with butter. Real butter if we’ve got it – otherwise, Country Crock works, twelve tablespoons for a monster batch. Each child gets to scoop the butter, so pull up chairs to stand on.

Sugar and brown sugar and . . .oh wow, no eggs.

Add a trip to the grocery. All of us in the station wagon - muffler is shot, and the front window stuck open; backseat smells like sour milk. And we love, love this old car. It’s like family.

Get your shoes on or you can’t go in!
Small town grocery. We can pay with piggy bank change, or even charge if we have to. Add four orange sodas to the bill. And a catnip mouse for the kitty, why not?

Home again, and the cat has his face in the mixing bowl, whiskers sticky. Add laughter here, lots of it. No sense getting mad on cookie day.

Okay, start over. Butter, sugars and everyone here crack an egg, we can put in enough flour to make it right.

Wait, we need music!
Add Jimmy Buffet, it’s summertime.
Vanilla – no don’t drink it! Just drop some in. Yep, that was plenty, don’t worry, it tastes good.

 Looking for my last shaker of salt. Dancing? Oldest child with the youngest on her hip. Middle child balances GI Joe on the edge of the bowl and then lets him flop in.

Add salt, baking soda. Rescue Joe and douse him under the faucet.

Nestles chips, the best part! Stir the dough and pretend not to notice the little fingers pinching at it, chocolate at the corners of Cheshire grins; we’ll all have belly aches and we don’t care.

Plop the dough on the cookie sheet by the spoonful and fill the whole house with wondrous scent of baking chocolate.

Sweet tooths and healthy appetites, and friends stopping by for a sleep-over.

Cookies gone by tomorrow, memories ours for a lifetime.
 ​