Compost Studios

It’s the Christmas season and I’ve been asked at least three times to bake cookies for worthy causes—The teachers! The kids! The party!

And each time I get asked, I either ignore the request or smile politely and offer to donate bakery cookies. At this point in my life, the only person I’d willfully bake cookies for is God himself, and only if the heavens open and I get the request directly from on High.

I don’t know when I turned into a cranky, non-baking bitch, but I’ve left my cookie sheets and cooling racks behind me.

Before I had kids, I made holiday cookies and occasionally baked molasses, ranger, oatmeal, or chocolate chip cookies during the year. When my son was an infant, I remember baking cookies for E’s office mates and packaging them in pretty bags. There were a few times during the preschool years where I willingly trashed my kitchen in the name of holiday tradition, trying not to lose my cool as I guided my kids through the rigors of rolling out dough and using cookie cutters of various shapes.

Following that, there was a brief interlude when I swore off cutout cookies and pledged only to make drop cookies but even the drop cookies dropped off my menu after a while. When my circle of friends hosted cookie exchanges, I was the only one to say “No thanks,” though one year, desperate to join the fun, I made chocolate covered pretzels.

My philosophy about the holidays in recent years is that if you wait long enough, some Martha Stewart wannabe in your circle will give you a home-baked handout. If not, enjoy the cookies at the holiday parties but don’t expect me to bake any at home.

I’m mean, I know.

And I feel guilty too. Guilty that my kids are living a cookie-free existence at home, that I have failed the June Cleaver litmus test, that I will forever be remembered as a selfish writer who typed all day but never creamed sugar and butter, tossed in eggs and vanilla, stirred in the dry ingredients, and turned the kitchen into a big sweet-smelling Happy Place for a few hours. It’s just that the mixing, the dropping, the endless baking and cooling and cleanup takes me to a Big Flour-Covered Unhappy Place.

But I miss my mom’s cookies, especially the big chewy molasses ones. This year I may break down and bake some cookies on Christmas Eve day and give my kids a happy holiday memory.

“Remember that time mom made cookies?”

There’s more than one way to become a legend in your own time. Bake cookies every year, and it’s expected and taken for granted. Bake once in a blue moon, and you become a Goddess.

December 13, 2006