Shouldn't…but Do

The day had to come.  It comes to most lives.  For me, it was last Friday.

The day I pierced Maya, the world’s illusion?  Pondered  universal entropy atop my roof while untangling old Christmas lights?

Well maybe I did one of those, but that was not the profundity of the day.

It was cookies.  Not the kind going stale in my computer – but their namesake, the chewy, warm, chocolate stretching kind.

Friday,  for the first time in my life,  I baked with the greater intent of actually producing cookies.

For some – like me – the cookie is a ruse, the excuse, to create a dough-full bowl to convey chocolate chips in slightly different form than straight out of the bag.  Sure, I have made countless cookies, but despite threat of salmonella, the leftover bowl is the raison d’etre.

Times change.  Intent on creating a cookie windfall, the bowl was scraped clean, yielding about two dozen (side note:  recipe yields are never accurate) moist, yet slightly crunchy cookies.

The chocolate chips, nestled deliciously in their doughy transport, did not call out to me as they once did.  Instead they pulled together, embraced their changed state and came forth in number – much to the delight of my children.

Funny thing, cookies.  In a life full of eat dessert first, and the joy is in the journey, sometimes genuine pleasure is found not just in the making and the baking, but in the moments, or the cookie, that marks the end of an effort.