Day 36: Cookie Cutters

Baking Christmas cookies has been the only holiday tradition that I have gladly taken part in each year from the time I was old enough to mix the batter with my mother's wooden spoon.  We made pizzelles, cinnamon twirls, anise balls, chocolate chip (with and without chocolate, with and without nuts), sugar cookies, and in my teens I began making my signature gingerbread cookies that have become a staple at every holiday. My mother's pans were blackened with age, long thin sheets that we placed in the oven two at a time. I have memories of standing up on a step stool over the single yellow kitchen counter, stirring away at endless bowls of batter. My mother always complained that I was scooping out too much for each cookie. I'd leave plenty of batter in the white plastic bowl and run my fingers around to lick the stickiness until my stomach hurt. The whole house would smell of sugar and spice. My father would sneak the cookies as they cooled on wire racks spread across the kitchen table. We'd pack them in Danish butter cookie tins from the 70s.

The year my then-boyfriend was stationed in Germany, I baked close to 300 cookies to box up and ship to him and his unit. My parents tried to discourage my efforts. "What are you doing that for?" my mother snapped. My father was too eager to take them to the post office for me. I walked them there myself, wanting to be sure they were sent with the correct postage and that they would arrive in time for Christmas. Several weeks later he came home on leave, a surprise that everyone else knew about. He proposed to me that New Year's, just weeks before he deployed to Iraq. I danced in the snow beneath the street lights that night on a quiet road by his best-friend's house.

He would spend the following Christmas in Iraq and I sent hundreds of cookies again. They took months to arrive, but I had vacuum sealed them in plastic wrapping and cushioned them between layers of plastic bubbles. The heat kept them soft, he said.

I still enjoy baking cookies at Christmas, although I don't make as many and I give most away to friends and co-workers. I bought the cookie cutter presses pictured above when I first moved back to Massachusetts. They seemed much larger, much more functional in the magazine catalog I ordered them from. I already had a set of cookie cutters for the sugar cookie recipe I'd perfected over the years, so this purchase was senseless. I think I might have tried to use them once, and the batter stuck to them despite how much flour I patted on.

For the first 24 days of the challenge, I followed Marylee's suggestion to make a list of the things I wanted to buy and to set it aside until day 25. I decided not to write a list, but to just keep one in my memory. I only had a few things I planned to purchase, but by day 25 I decided I didn't need them after all. Letting go of so much has changed the way I shop and think about shopping. Before, I never brought lists-- not even to the supermarket. There's this strange phenomena that happens as soon as I cross the automatic door threshold and step into the sensory over-load of any store-- I completely forget what I have come for. Before, I would wander around for hours, trying to recall the single item that prompted the trip. In my meandering, I would inevitably find more things to buy and sometimes forget the first thing completely, which prompted a second trip to the store and more needless purchasing. Today, I stopped by a store on my way home from work with the intention of buying a lamp for my new meditation room and a blue cardigan to match my blue summer skirts. I came out with both items and nothing else. It's refreshing to have regained control over my apartment, my past, and my buying.