In every family, there is a code sentence that always signals trouble. For some families it’s “sit down, we need to talk.” In other families, it comes with, “you won’t believe what I’m going to tell you now.” In our household, everyone knows there is trouble when I say, “I baked some cookies.”
I will apologize in advance to those women out there who love to cook, and some of those are in my own family. I apologize because for myself, I can think of no greater punishment than having to cook…I’m pretty poor at it and I’m okay with that. In addition, I never and I mean NEVER cook anything for the pure pleasure of it. But when things are at their worst, I bake cookies.
When Roy and I began traveling life’s highway together, he was unaware of this. It took five months into the marriage for him to stumble out of the bedroom one night, wipe the sleep out of his eyes and say, “It’s two o’clock in the morning, what are you doing?”
“I’m baking cookies,” I reply as I spoon some more dough on the cookie sheet. “Why, am I disturbing you?”
“Not you, just when the timer goes off,” he replied dryly. “Why are you baking cookies now. Come to think of it, I didn’t know you COULD bake cookies.”
“I don’t make cookies except in extreme circumstances,” I answered.
“And 2:00 in the morning is extreme because…” he prompted.
“I can’t sleep and it seems like a dangerous time of night to go for a walk in my pajamas and slippers,” I replied, sliding another batch into the oven. “You go on back to sleep, I’ll try to catch the timer before it goes off.”
From that point on, he adjusted to the fact that when his wife goes into the kitchen on purpose and bakes cookies, something major is wrong.
The time I hit the garage door with his fancy car, I baked a lot of cookies. Then there was the time that all the plumbing in the house was leaking. It was hard to do much washing up, when every pipe was leaking, but I made a batch of cookies anyway. Every time one of the children had an illness, I stewed and fretted and baked cookies. For all I know, they faked illness just to score a chocolate chip cookie! For the most part, I had them convinced that Oreos came from an old family recipe handed down from my grandmother, so when freshly baked cookies appeared in the house they were stymied!
So, today, on day two of the blocked in by the snow days, I got out the old mixer and a bag of flour and set to work making cookies. Roy came home and sniffed the air, and stopped dead in the doorway. “Oh god, let me see, uh, you’re leaving me?”
”Of course not, don’t be ridiculous, why would you say that?” I handed him three cookies, fresh out of the oven.
“You’re not leaving me. Did you wreck the car? Run over the dog? Chop a hole in the deck with the snow shovel?” His concern over why I was baking didn’t stop him from downing the cookies and hooking a couple more.
“I didn’t do anything. Nothing is bothering me. I’m just fine and so is the dog. However, it was a long, slow day, so I decided to bake some cookies. Can’t a person just bake some cookies?”
“I suppose so, but it’s never happened around here before. Cookies normally come with a side of milk and a major disaster. So, I wondered, why the sudden influx of fresh-baking?” he still couldn’t quite believe it.
“Honestly, that’s so insulting. You act like I never cook anything, and that’s just not so,” I said, and he finally relaxed and headed for the living room. A moment’s silence and then he asked, “What happened to my good recliner? I was going to take a nap.”
“About that,” I said, coming in with a plate of cookies and a glass of milk. “I was gonna mention that. But first, here, I baked some cookies….”
dropsinthewell 