mamaw’s cookies

If there was one thing mamaw had liked doing with her grandkids, it was passing down the family cookie recipe.

She taught them how to bake, and how to bake cookies, and how to bake the family cookies specifically. She told them how it had been a recipe since their great great great great great someone or another found the best way to make the tastiest cookies, and it had been passed down and made better ever since.

“You know, Georgie,” mamaw commented offhandedly, holding the bowl of dough on her hip and gesturing with her stirring spoon, “someday you’ll be the one teachin’ the youngin’s the family recipe. Maybe your kids, or grandkids, or nieces, or nephews, or somethin’, but you’ll be teaching ‘em.”

“But you won’t write it down for me. How am I gonna remember it?” Georgie had asked, rubbing her eyes with the palm of her flour covered hand. “I can’t remember all the steps and ingredients and measurements and stuff...”

“The thing ‘bout passin’ down a recipe is every person who passes it down is gonna add their own touches,” mamaw had explained. “You’re gonna do somethin’ different, and that’s gonna be okay. You’re allowed to mess it up.”

Georgie frowned thoughtfully and, after a bit, asked, with wide eyes, “What did you do different?”

Mamaw shrugged. “Don’t know,” she said simply, and Georgie pouted at the vagueness of the answer, “cause I don’t remember exactly how my ma did it. I just took what I remembered and messed it up to make it my own. Ain’t that the beauty of it?”

Georgie didn’t really get it, but it sounded like mamaw did, so she nodded to pretend that she understood. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Tha’s the beauty of it.”

But her grandma caught on and shook her head. “I’m teachin’ you now, but you’ll learn later,” she said.

Georgie didn’t really get what that meant either, but mamaw had handed her the mixing bowl and she got distracted stirring.

Mamaw had passed on since then, and Georgie hadn’t had the heart to try her hand at the recipe until now.

“Let’s see... two cups of flour, I think... lemon zest... a teaspoon of vanilla... or is it two?”

Georgie worried for a moment that she would get it wrong, but she shook it off. “You’re bein’ silly, Georgie,” she told herself. “You’re allowed to mess it up a bit.” Mamaw had taught her that much.

Being too careful would get her stuck in a box. She was allowed to mess it up.

She mixed what she hoped was at least close to the right ingredients and amounts in a bowl before pressing dollops of dough to the tray and sliding them into the oven.

For the next hour and a half she distracted herself with getting mamaw’s record player to play, then singing along to the familiar music.

The smell of baking cookies and the sound of mamaw’s favorite music took Georgie back to some of her most cherished memories, mostly of her and mamaw in the kitchen when she was just a kid.

That had been so long ago but the memories still felt comfortable. They still felt like, smelled like, sounded like days in the kitchen with mamaw.

She hadn’t thought about those memories in a while- it hurt to think how those days were long gone- but it was nice to remember now.

Georgie was distracted by the memories so much so that she forgot to check impatiently on the cookies while they baked the way that she so often did.

When her timer beeped and she did take the tray out, the cookies came out crispier than she remembered, and a little sweeter.

She almost wanted to cry over the fact that she didn’t remember perfectly, but mamaw wouldn’t mind the changes one bit- and the cookies still felt the same at heart.

Mamaw would be proud, and Georgie didn’t just think that to make herself feel better. Her mamaw would be proud. Insanely proud. Proud of her for making the cookies her own.

Because she did. Georgie made the cookies her own, just like mamaw had, and just like everyone before mamaw, all the way back to the first batch of cookies made with the family recipe.

Georgie wondered how many versions of the recipe there must be by now, and how far it must have been from the original.

Hell, she even wondered if the original recipe was for sugar cookies at all.

Did her cousins have their own versions of the recipe too? She hadn’t seen them in ages, but she was sure mamaw had told them about the cookies too, so it wasn’t too far out of a thought.

She would never really know, but she had to be okay with that. The same way that she had to be okay with mamaw being gone. She would grieve, but she would let the changes come.

Maybe that was the point. Maybe that was the point of the recipe, maybe that’s what she was supposed to learn from it.

Georgie let out a laugh that could have easily doubled as a sob, and her eyes teared up without a clear reason. It could have easily been from relief, or realization, or wistfulness... just about anything.

Of course her mamaw was helping her from beyond the grave, and through a cookie recipe of all things. Wasn’t that as mamaw as anything?

Georgie couldn’t be sure if that was what her mamaw, or any of her other grandparents and great grandparents and great great grandparents and great great great grandparents, in mind when they started handing down an ever changing family recipe, but it gave her a bit of comfort to think rhat maybe it was.

“Mamaw, you did it,” she hummed, picking up another cookie and internally comparing it to how she remembered mamaw’s cookies to be, “I get it now. You taught me real long ago, but I’m learnin’ it now.”