Last night I made cookies.
Well, to be truly honest, I didn't actually complete the cookies. But I made the batter, rolled them out, put the fancy concoction inside, rolled them up and put the whole package in the fridge to chill out.
There's something so very comforting about making cookies that has nothing to do with their sweetness, but has everything to do with the activity of your mind and attentiveness to exact measurements, multitasking the mixing and chopping of various ingredients and creative substitutions. It's about being busy without being stessed. And, for me, it's about the selflessness: knowing that I am doing this for someone else because I never make cookies for myself. The joy of picking the right cookie for the right person and having the right ingredients on hand to make it work.
It's about the TV on in the background, playing Grey's Anatomy so I can watch while doing something productive.
It's the perfect activity for the end of a bad day, when things have not gone your way. When you find yourself alone in your house, again, surrounded by worry, and knowing the worrying cannot do any good. When you don't need companionship so much as a focus. When you want to feel like you can do something that matters. Something special.
Cookies matter.
When you don't expect them, and someone shows up with some homemade cookies. Yes, cookies made by their own hands. And they smell like vanilla and sugar and have "I really tried" written all over them. Then cookies matter. Because they can make you smile.
Even if you don't like cookies, you will have one.
Because that's how much they matter.
And that's what it made me feel last night. I put this together with some of that and mixed like they told me to. And spread like I was supposed to and did everything right and, there, it was done (or, as I said, chilling out).
Wouldn't it be nice if you could just do that all the time? If you could just do this and that, just do everything you can right, according to a recipe that someone has taken the time to write out, and, there, it's done.
But it doesn't happen like that, does it?
Sometimes I don't end up with cookies.
Sometimes I end up with a mess of burnt dough.
3 comments:
Cookies do matter. I just mailed a batch of cookies to my dad cause it sounded like he needed a hug and I couldn't give him one - so my cookies in a box are my hug.
Exactly - cookies have the power of a hug. And unlike the hug, you can have the good feeling of bringing that hug into being before the other person even knows it's coming.
I LOVED your cookie expressions. Of course I am sad that you would ever think of being productive while Grey's Anatomy is on. My Thursday nights are deliberately void of productivity as I sit on the sofa eating ice cream. But I gotta say that cookies would be a nice compliment to that. hmmmmm...
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