MindSpinner

My daughter and I made Christmas cookies yesterday, for the first time in a number of years. It’s a little different now.

There is still the licking the batter from the spoon or just plain snatching some of it to eat out of hand. We’d forgotten just how good that old-fashioned sugar cookie dough is.

There is still plunking the cookie cutter right down into the middle of the rolled out dough without any plan for efficient positioning. There is still that voice in my head reminding me, “Perfection doesn’t matter. Shut up. Just a gentle suggestion now and then….” There is still a big mess and a decorator who has satisfied her desire to decorate after a half dozen cookies have been smeared with icing. We leave half the cookies plain. I like the plain ones, too.

But some things are different, now that she’s fifteen. At first, she wanted to make all men, using the gingerbread boy cookie cutter. “What about angels? Or bells?” I asked.

“We don’t need angels,” she pronounced. “Those are girls,” she said, noting the shape of the angel cookie cutter, with its spreading robe. “We need men.” She made a lot of men. She made her current heartthrob, the boy who lives across the river and plays drums in a band. For a minute there he was anatomically correct. Oh boy. His hair was green. She made a man for me and insisted that I eat that cookie in particular. Finally, bored with men, she diversified. “Let’s make dinosaurs.” We actually have dinosaur cookie cutters. So for Christmas we have the odd T Rex and Triceratops, but somehow we never got around to Santa. Not sexy enough. I finished using up the dough with blessedly simple shapes that are easy to get on and off the pan.

When there were cookies to be had, my son emerged from his room to devour a few. Christmas came in the kitchen.

Have a cookie. If it’s Christmas you celebrate, Merry Christmas! In any case, I wish you all things good.