Cookie Cost-Benefit

Every year about this time they start asking.  Every day, until I say yes.  It takes me awhile, mostly because I know how much work it is, how much time it takes and yes, the mess, that part too.  Still, every year I do say yes.

Its not because it has to be done.  Certainly children don't NEED to make 100 sugar cookies, all rolled out on our table, a dusting of flour from head to toe.  They wouldn't be considered deprived it I didn't let them march around the neighborhood delivering cookies to family and friends with a telltale circle of frosting around their mouths.  I could justify letting this one tradition slip quietly by and keep my floors clean, my walls untouched by sticky, sprinkle-dyed hands.

They'd be fine without it, that's for sure.  But would I?  Its when I'm vacuuming (for the second time) the sprinkles off the floor that I realize that maybe its not all cost for me and benefit for them...its benefit for me, too.

To hear their voices laughing and talking excitedly.  To watch them help each other out, cheer each other on, compliment each other on the perfect frosting-to-cookie ratio.  Really, all of that is pure pleasure, not just for them, but for me too.

These years are going by like a blur and when I stop to catch my breath I can feeling it creeping up on me, that realization that my life's a vapor and I'm watching it drift away.  That maybe for today one thing I can do is revel in what I've been given for this blisteringly speedy moment. The impossible gift of 5 beautiful, amazing human beings to share my life with.  A clean floor can't compete with that, not in a million years.

In this equation, the benefits win out.  I'm lapping up the here and now before life chugs onward and I'm left with only memories.  The smudge of frosting on her cheek.  His hands stuck with sprinkles.  And all those smiles beaming up at me.



Want to make cookies with us?  Here's our recipe.