Day 7: A Day For Miracles

My mother became very ill while I was still in High School.  She was bed ridden for nearly two years while the doctors tried to figure out what was wrong with her.  During this time I recall how special it felt to come home and find her out of bed and functioning like her old self. 

On this particular day in December, a week before Christmas, I found my mom awake, dressed, and full of life in our old white washed kitchen and, best of all, she was waiting for me.  She’d found not only the energy to get out of bed but the energy to go to the grocery store where she purchased all the makings for sugar cookies.  

She knew I’d met a young man early that summer who was becoming more and more important in my life and she wanted to make up for her absence during this time by making cookies for him, his parents, and siblings.

Neither of us had ever made sugar cookies by scratch before but we’d made chocolate chip, oatmeal, rum balls, wedding cookies…so, how difficult could sugar cookies be? We cut out a recipe from a magazine that had what looked like a beautiful recipe complete with icing and decorating ideas.

We spent hours making batches and batches of cookies.  It was a magical kind of day despite the cold wet weather outside and our worries about mom’s health.  We talked about Christmases past and things we wanted to do in the future.  It was a hopeful day and we hadn’t had a chance for many of those which made this one even more precious.  

When the first batch of cookies came out of the oven we tried them and marveled at their taste.  We iced them and added finishing touches that even Martha Stewart (had we known who she was then) would have marveled at!  Then, as my mother’s energy faded and the last cookies were decorated, I sent her to bed and I boxed up my treasures to share with my young man and his family. 

I remember I didn’t have any heat in my car, the weather was wet and cold but I felt incredible and I couldn’t wait to share my new found hope with everyone…as well as the wonderful cookies I’d made with my mother.  I raced into Joshua’s house, “merry Christmased” everyone then raced back home with the hope that mom had regained some of her energy. 

I entered our house with trepidation.  You never knew what level of sick my mom was feeling and though our house was old and it creaked and groaned I’d learned to separate the normal sounds of an old house with the sounds of the living.  I’d learned to gage if I needed to tiptoe through the house to quietly close myself off in my bedroom or if I could visit with mom quietly for a moment.  Today, there was laughter in the kitchen.  Something I hadn’t heard in a very long time.  It was laughter so full that I almost confused it with crying. 

“Andi, is that you?” Mom called out, nearly swallowing the sentence in laughter. 

“Yes.” I answered back timidly.

“Come see what I’ve discovered.” I could hear some kind of pounding going on over mom’s laughing.

I’m not sure what I was expecting but it wasn’t my mom, surrounded by shattered pieces of our lovely cookies, with a hammer in hand.  She had tears running down her face from laughing so hard and inside I felt something drop.  Somehow, between me leaving and getting back she’d cracked, it was all I could think to myself.  Then, mom tossed me a cookie sending it spiraling through the air like a Frisbee.  I nearly caught it but it bounced off my hand and landed with a thud on the kitchen floor. A very loud, very heavy thud, like something three times it weight. 

Somehow, in the cooling process, our cookies had become like lead bricks.  They were impervious to teeth.

“Quick,” Mom said between laughs, “call Joshua’s family and warn them not to eat the cookies! Tell them they’re meant to be ornaments for the trees but don’t let them eat those cookies!”

*I’ll never know what happened with our cookies, and honestly I’m really not interested.  Had they turned out perfect it may well have been the end of my magical day with my mother.  Instead, like two lunatics, my mom and I spent the entire evening laughing over our cookie foibles and concocting the perfect use for our culinary disaster, each idea sillier than the last.  And to add to the perfect day, my two brothers came home to find the kitchen in a mess and the two of us like silly kids.  We all sat around the kitchen table, like we’d used to when mom was well, and we laughed and we talked and we all felt hope that the future might actually be a bright place after all.