Christmas Cookies and How I Learned to Bake Myself into Holidays

I don’t know if my mother liked the

actual act of baking cookies or just

the idea of being surrounded by such a variety

that if our cluttered counter of church bulletins

Bed, Bath and Beyond advertisements  and

shards of notebook paper with phone numbers

scrawled on them were to

be permanently cleared away

that our muddled kitchen

could be the centerfold of the Martha Stewart Magazine

Holiday cookie edition.

I remember the days when I had been the egg

cracker or the one who put the raisin eyes

on the gingerbread men.

If I held a measuring cup it would only be

to pour what my mother told me.

I pretended to be a sous chef and

I wore a red and yellow apron with flowers to play the part.

We watched Chopped and Iron Chef

while the oven held bouquets of

pecan tassies, snicker doodles

thumb prints, and anise spritz flowers

tight to its chest like unopened love letters.

She doesn’t bake cookies anymore really

and it’s no body’s fault.

There was one year where she was in the hospital

the week before Christmas and the only present

I remember is an ultra-sound image of my

unborn brother– I remember asking if

it was a picture of me.

She had only gotten to bake the lemon pepper cookies.

I think that was the last year I ate cookies.

I learned how to use measuring cups.

I never stopped tasting cookies even

if I don’t eat them.

There is something about my anorexia

that has made me a wonderful baker–

better than the sous chef should be.

Instead of licking spoons I can

taste the way the butter and the sugar thicken

in the greedy arms of the mixer when

the batter brushes against my fingers.

I bite into the chalky surface of a chocolate meringue

with my eyelids as I watch them grown like

little crowns in the oven.

I know I should be trying to eat more cookies.

I know it’s weird that I hold oatmeal cranberry

dough in my palms like bird eggs

because I feel like I can almost

feel the oats between my teeth.

I know I didn’t eat enough cookies this Christmas

but when you told me about them

I felt like I knew what compelled the sugar

cookie dinosaurs to raise for the breath of the oven.

And soon I’ll be golden brown around the edges.

And soon I’ll brush the taste of

chocolate chip blondies from my teeth before bed.

Until then I’ll make my brother the sous chef

and I can be the baker.

And he can put the eyes on the gingerbread men.

And my mom can tell me they look beautiful.