Cookies

I was invited today to make cookies with one of the hockey moms on my son's team.

I dreaded it.

I pulled in to her neighborhood and I felt like I had no place there. My car filthy... I reaked of booze from the night before and stale cigarettes. The houses were huge, the yards flawless...and there I was. Dry faced and unshowered. Completely out of place.

I pulled up to her driveway...Christmas had vomited all over their home. I was immediately horrified. I rang the bell and she came to the door covered in frosting.

She welcomed me in, as did the small people dancing around my toes shrieking in delight for cookies. The Christmas train roared in my hungover...potentially still drunk brain. I immediately wanted to flee.

Her nieces and nephews and mother and husband and her two boys and their friends paraded throughout the home in the most peaceful chaos. She handed me an apron & some dough & I began to roll out the dough. A small person wanted to help... And by help I mean take over the entire project and not listen to any direction.

Typically, this would have made me nuts. Typically, in this situation, having a rolling pin in my hand would not have ended well.

This time, it did not.

Flour and sprinkles exploded everywhere. Miscut cookie shapes, horrifying amounts of frosting, and the most amazing excitement radiated from the kids right in to my bahumbugged heart.

The family operated like a dance. Baking and trains and hockey games and nerd fights and light saber battles and joy. Pure joy.

All of a sudden, I got it.

It wasn't about fucking cookies, it was about the joy. It wasn't about keeping the house clean, or making the perfect cookie or doing it just so or staying quiet or any of that. It was about joy.

It was about family. It was about coming together to make gifts for people in your life. It was about working together. It was about just fucking joy.

So, while I left with 87 cookies or so... I also left with something far more delicious...joy. And the quest for more.