protocols for being human: cookies = love

Meme’s cookies. For every Christmas of my childhood, my grandmother, who we called Meme, would send us a batch of molasses cookies, and they were the very best things.

She decorated each and every one by hand, which even back then were gnarled with arthritis. The Santa cookies had perfect blue eyes and rosy lips. The Christmas trees bore gorgeous bobbles and garland, and the ginger people were dapper in their royal icing garments.

Sure, I liked the decorations and they probably (way back in my subconscious) made the cookies way more delicious, but as a kid I was all about eating them. Pretty much until I made myself sick from ingesting so much molasses and lard and so many egg whites.

Meme has been gone for years. My mom has taken on the mantle of the molasses tradition. She’s even adapted the recipe to be vegetarian-friendly (goodbye lard), and has come up with avant-garde decorating techniques. The new tradition is to decorate them together when we can, and still eat enough in one sitting to make ourselves feel ill.

But the holidays 2020. Covid. Isolation. How do we celebrate at a distance? How do we keep all the feel good family bonding traditions going?

The answer: Together separately.

I am a baby in the time honored molasses cookie tradition. I’ve only made the cookies by myself once before. This was my second time. But I have good teachers, and I’ve eaten by body weight of these cookies, so that makes me an expert, right?

Here’s what I learned:

• I am not an expert. At all.
• Roll the dough out evenly.
• Match cookie sizes and shapes for even baking (i.e. less burning, fewer “crunchy” cookies)
• Decorating is HARD; like, really hard to do by yourself with no one else there to help you, and without it being a family activity with laughter and drinks and snacks and stories and music going on in the background and showing each other the vulgar gingerbread people we made.

For years, my grandmother meticulously decorated cookies for us. In my own attempt this year, I realized this was a lonely endeavor. I sat at the kitchen table surrounded by different colors of royal icing and knives and bare cookies and little red hot decorations and sprinkles and imagined how my Meme felt. I stacked my trays, and put on some festive music, which in my family is Queen or Abba. I slathered icing on, and none of my Christmas dinosaurs looked half as good as Meme’s most austere star. This required precision and icing that was not nearly as runny as what I had made.

I put myself in my grandmother’s shoes, alone in her house in Vermont, baking sheets upon sheets of cookies to share with all of her grandchildren. Decorating and making them both beautiful and delicious, and picking out the right combination for each household. And doing this for years, which became decades.

I started crying. Not all out bawling, but the kind of quiet almost tears that hurt in your bones.

These cookies were an act of love. Maybe even a fierce act of love. Meme put her time, she put her care and love into working this tough dough, and making delightful mouthfuls of confection. She put her attention into the details of making them as beautiful as she could. And then she gave them all away.

I have a lot to learn about cookies. It turns out I also have a lot to learn about love. I wish I had had the chance to tell my grandmother a real thank you for all those years of love, to let her know that I understand this act of devotion, this mindful present work a little bit better.

Since I can’t do that, I’ll have to do the next best thing.

Make cookies.

• 

• 

• 

• 

PS, I know. They’re hideous. The good news is I have plenty of room to improve.