The Cookie Jar
The kitchen has not yet been painted, nor that hideous wall paper stripped – though all cabinets are clean and freshly lined. The new refrigerator is working beautifully and happily housing the magnets; the dishwasher finally arrived yesterday, it took three weeks to get here. I will spend a lot of time in the kitchen, and making it mine matters. However, I am also taking sage advice from Marcial and Nour, who both said not to make too many changes too quickly. Live in it for a while and go slowly.
But there are certain things which my kitchen has always required, like the colanders hanging by the sink, across from Mary Engelbreit art, given to me by Joy and Caroline, my little duck though is new, homage to my ducks in Florida, which I am missing. It is not easy to mar a hard wood cabinet which has never had a nail or screw pierce its surface. I comfort myself with the fact that I do not like the finish and would prefer the cabinetry to be white; plus I need the colanders!
I use to love moving and found it easy to make a new place home; when I look at old photographs, of the places I have lived, there are always striking similarities, this house, however is different. For the first time in my life, there are no books in the living room, except one of my Mother’s Bibles. I have a library, an unexpected gift, yet, somehow the living room does not feel quite right, in time, I suppose.
There is a need to make this house home, and the only way I know to do so is with the familiar. Lia, my very dear friend, whom I have known since I was eighteen, is the first to occupy the guest room. Too many years had passed since we had spent time together, yet from our first hello, it is as if we had only seen each other the day before – very familiar. We recall being in each other’s homes throughout the years, the people we have known and loved, the wonderful memories and losses, and suddenly she is in my home and not in a house which I do not yet know.
I continue to search for the familiar and find myself returning to the kitchen. I put the little cloisonné butterfly Melody brought me from China on my hanging plant, and wonder why it has been so long since she and I made cookies together – ah cookies – what is more familiar than cookies?
My Mother use to make “Mother’s Oat’s” cookies, filling the house with warm, inviting, and delicious smells! For years, I had kept a lid off an oatmeal box, to use as my starter recipe for oatmeal cookies, a true favorite. Repeatedly, I would check the new box of oats, to make sure my recipe was still there; then in these last few years of being unsettled, I threw my original round recipe lid away, proclaiming boldly: it is always on the box – wrong.
Thus, after years of it living in a crate, in my garage, I took out my Mother’s old cookie jar. Either Brenda or Nancy, I think Nancy, though Brenda was very generous and had excellent taste, gave my Mother a Noah’s Ark cookie jar in 1973, shortly after we moved to Hawaii. I remember the day that jar entered the family; it came from JC Penny’s, a very fancy store, to me, in a very large colorful box, very much like a gift should, and while I did not think it attractive, per say, nor do I today, I was attracted to it. Though we were a family of bakers, we had never had anything as extravagant as a cookie jar. My Mother quickly went about filling the jar with oatmeal cookies!
When I was unpacking my crates of dishes, I came across the cookie jar, which I am ashamed to say, came into my possession, after I threw a decisive and what unequivocally can only be called a temper tantrum. After we moved back to the mainland, with stops in Bell, Delano, and Maywood, we eventually settled in Pico Rivera, California, where my Mother became very good friends with our neighbor, Maria, who had four children. My Mother decided that Maria could use the Noah and the Ark cookie jar, and gave it to her. There was no family discussion or good-by ceremony, my Mother simply decided that with Joy and I out of the house, Mother in school full time, and little baking going on, the cookie jar needed a new home with four young children.
My Mother was one of the most generous people in the world; you in fact had to be careful in complementing her, because if you mentioned that you liked something she was wearing or had, she would insist that you take it. Thus what transpired next, in the saga of this cookie jar, was not easy for her; but rather, as I now reflect upon it all, a sure sign of her love for me.
I came home and noticed that Noah and the Ark were missing from atop the refrigerator. Where had they gone? What happened to the cookie jar?
Very casually, and in a matter of fact way, as if she had done nothing wrong, my Mother told me she had given it to Maria. Well, I went ballistic, how could she give away a family heirloom? Yes, I am overly attached to anything which I think has historical significance to my family. A family created by two people who came from rather stable environments, in that my Father’s family lived in the same house, his entire life, and my Mother’s in the same part of the state, her entire life. Yet, they bounced around the world, lived in dozens upon dozens of places, and their children have done much the same, though I see some promise of settling down with the grandchildren.
I cried: How could you give away our cookie jar? Do you not see how little we have of a past? The cookie jar is part of our history?
My Mother looked at me, in my state of hysteria, over a cookie jar, and assessed the situation; she was a brilliant woman, a straight “A” student always, but had little interest in mathematics or history. Why was I so upset? She was flustered, and I went on talking about the history of the cookie jar, how it was a gift, and we are not supposed to give gifts away, how it had been in our family for almost seven years! There should have been a family meeting. Finally, she threw up her hands: I will get the cookie jar back. Really, I thought?
The dear woman, went to what was indeed a very good friend, and explained that she needed to get the cookie jar back, I am rather certain the only time in her life that my Mother ever asked for anything back; apparently I had some irrational attachment to Noah and the Ark, she explained to Maria. She gave me the cookie jar, and I promised to buy Maria another cookie jar, sincerely thanking my Mother, who periodically, in the next thirty years, would ask me about the cookie jar, which I never seemed to have had room for or simply never made room for.
The new house has room for the cookie jar. As I brought it out of the basement, I noticed more than a few signs of wear; it is also brown, a color I am not wild about, though the new house is inundated with it. Nevertheless, I gingerly placed it on the counter, and began to wash it as if it were a fine piece of porcelain china. Noah and the Ark were going to rest, atop the refrigerator, once again.
The cookie jar now needed cookies; I got down a box of Quaker Oats, knowing there could be no debate regarding what kind of cookie should go into Noah and the Ark. I read the recipe, wanting to make sure I had the prerequisite ingredients, before beginning to bake, and much to my chagrin, there was something wrong with the recipe. The name was the same, but the butter and sugar were off.
I went searching for my old lid, though I clearly remembered throwing it away, hoping perhaps I had saved more than one recipe lid – I had not. A quick search on the internet led me to the fact that my original recipe was not the original, as mine never called for shortening. Apparently, there are many people searching for the “original” recipe.
For a few minutes, sadness swept over me; I was not going to be able to make my Mother’s familiar oatmeal cookies, and thereby baptize the kitchen as mine. I walked away from the kitchen and stepped outside to enjoy the changing leaves and walk by the river. My mind went back to the cookies, and the more I thought about them, the more I thought about how I always used the Quaker Oats recipe as my base. I added nutmeg and when I discovered cardamom, I began to add at least a teaspoon to the dough, I liked to put in a pinch of allspice and if I was going to add nuts, I toasted them . . . my oatmeal cookies were only inspired by Quaker and Mother. (I will share my recipe under Food)
I returned to the kitchen and proceeded to make my cookies in what is becoming my kitchen in what will be my new home. That is all for now.
