Cookies

When I was a young teen, my siblings were old teens and when my parents were out, the party was often on at our house. My oldest sister introduced me to my first beer. Generic. A white can, black letters BEER. I thought it was awful, but gulped it down. I was cool too, right? I can see myself sitting in the blue floral chair (where did that chair go? my other sister had it in that Berkeley den of hers years ago... hmmm...?), orange shag on the floor, doing my best to chug along with the rest.

A few years years later she would introduce another... 'substance', right there in the laundry room. She was home from her travels for the holidays and suggested that this would help us get through Christmas Eve mass. Looking back, not sure that it did, perhaps it made me a bit more anxious for mass to get over with, my heart racing and ready for the traditional Christmas Eve opening of one family gift... what else might my sister have in store for me? My older and well traveled sister, knowledgeable in the ways of young twenty-somethings, while I was still a lowly teen trying to fight my way through high school...

This is what I'm thinking about this blustery afternoon as I smell the homemade chocolate chip cookies (mmm, butter, sugar...) baking away. How many can I eat before the kids get home? Could I cover up the odor of the chocolate goodness somehow? They'll never know if I can mask the odor and hide the cookies... I could keep them all to myself!

See, back in the day, I would burn toast around the house to mask the odors of my sister and her parties. How I thought that up- don't know? I cleaned up vomit, cleaned up alcohol spills, masked the odors traveling through our house by burning different substances that what had been burned before. One time I remember some of the friends streaking down the street and trying to decide what best to do with their leftover clothes...

The connection? Drugs of being responsible, legal drugs... chocolate, sugar, butter... better fat than stoned... And thinking about hording them for myself, masking the odors of freshly baked goodness, so that I can get away with the crime. Odd connections... Fleeting thoughts...

My kids will be thrilled we have homemade cookies- maybe I'll throw them in the car for when I pick them up at school- it'll make their day!

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