I’ve been baking cookies.
Oatmeal raisin, molasses, espresso chocolate chip, brownies, blondies.
Some of this is anxiety baking – I’m so tired of being cooped up while a pandemic rages outside. I ask myself if it’s worth getting Covid over a box of stale cookies, and it isn’t. So I bake for myself and my carb-avoiding husband is also stressed out because he’s snacking too. The pre-pandemic cycle of denial and rules has been fractured. Every other week I bake my feelings and we stretch out the results.
Early in the quarantine, I did some Covid crafting and made tie-dye items for a friend. I delivered them with a dozen oatmeal raisin cookies. She loved the items and her family loved the cookies. Then her mom got sick and wasn’t eating. I delivered a few dozen espresso chocolate chip cookies without nuts because her mom couldn’t handle the chewiness and abrasiveness of walnuts. Those were well received. Her mom has good days and bad days and last week was not so good. I offered more cookies to tempt the appetite. I gave her a choice of Snickerdoodles or Lemon Bars. Her eyes lit up and she eagerly asked for Snickerdoodles.
I stood in my hot summer kitchen packing dough into balls that would be rolled in cinnamon sugar and felt the supreme satisfaction of taking simple ingredients and creating deliciousness. There is something about cooking for people, even people you haven’t met, that warms the soul. The time I used to spend on the road, at work, shopping, dining out, distracting myself from my emotions and body pains can now be used to plan and cook healthful meals. I can do a yoga workout at lunchtime or spend it reading with the cat. Time feels more elastic and forgiving.
My mind and thoughts however, are not.
I am a caretaker by nature and I want to heal the world with neck massages, comiserating chats and baked goods. I don’t really have an outlet for that right now and I worry that I’ve become the crazy cat loving touchy feely sugar dealer who thrusts unwanted home crafted tchochkes and indifferent baked goods on people who are too nice to say no thank you. (That’s not really true; the cookies are outstanding but everyone’s taste is different and maybe you don’t want my particular brand of oatmeal raisin) [I know this is psychosis]
I ask my husband if I’m overdoing it out of a deep rooted sense of insecurity or if I’m just an amazing caring friend. Is this my ego, I wonder. Or is this my manipulative nature – I’m not baking these for US (as if that’s a bad thing) I’m baking for my friend’s MOM. She’s the recipient of the bounty. You can’t complain about unnecessary snacks when they are cancer cookies.
In the end, I’m going to do what my heart tells me to do. I have friends who can’t get my healing back rubs, silly jokes or nourishing food right now. I wish I could bake for all of them, near and far. Some day I will be in need of cookies or companionship or compassion and I believe that my deeds will circle back around.
The Snick’s were a huge success….mom said she hadn’t had them since she was a girl. I had one with my tea this morning. It was gently crunchy, buttery and not too sweet. A nugget of love, baked with caring, seasoned with kindness.
/dsh; 8/10/20
Corgi and a Cuppa Tea 