My mother has always been a baker.
There were pies cooling on the counter, cakes with candles, popcorn balls wrapped for little hands, and cookies—
The recipe begins the way it always has.
Two cups of flour, sifted.
Nothing rushed,
nothing guessed.
She reaches for the same bowl, the same measuring cups she has had for as long as I can remember. I can still picture them in the drawer when I was a child, their familiar clink against one another, dusted with flour, their edges softened by years of butter, and sugar.
Now she is ninety.
She moves more slowly. The butter takes longer to cream. The eggs are cracked with greater care. She pauses between each ingredient before stirring them together.
The joy of watching my mom repeat the same familiar gestures for a lifetime.
The way she levels the flour, folds in the chocolate chips, and scrapes every last bit of batter from the bowl.
Nothing hurried,
nothing wasted.
The cookies emerge from the oven as they always have, golden at the edges, unmistakably hers.
A lifetime of devotion of doing one ordinary thing with love, over and over again.
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