From Stuff with Stories
The cookie jar knew lots of secrets. Important things, like which cookies the children liked best and which ones were fed to the dog. He knew how many cookies were burned over the years by a distracted cook. He had eavesdropped on all the coming and goings, all the laughter and tears, all the hard, sad times, and all the squeals of delight. The cookie jar kept all the secrets.
The cookie jar was a short, round baker with a brown face. He spent his early years sitting on the kitchen counter at Portia’s house. All five of Portia’s children loved the baker and his tummy of cookies; but for one child in particular, so many memories of his mother were associated with the cookie jar. When Portia died, George took the little round baker home to sit on his kitchen counter.
George and his wife, Pat, filled the jar with homemade cookies--peanut butter cookies, filled cookies, sugar cookies—and even store-bought cookies. Their children, Tim, Mike, and Debbie, ate them all. And the cookie jar, once again, kept the secrets learned from his years on the kitchen counter.
When Pat died, George asked the children to choose something to take to their home that best reminded them of their mother. Tim asked for the cookie jar.
That was when it happened. That was when George told one of the secrets the cookie jar had kept for so long—since George was a little boy.
George hesitated for a moment.
“Tim, my mother didn’t have an easy life, but all five of us kids knew she loved us. I was the baby of the family; and by the time I was born, Mother was deaf. She had been sick, and when she recovered, she couldn’t hear.
“That didn’t stop her from knowing when I was up to something. I thought she had eyes in the back of her head.
“I loved my mother. I always wished that she had heard the sound of my voice.”
What is there about an old cookie jar that can stir up such memory, such raw emotion as contained in the heartfelt yearning of a little boy for his mother to hear his voice. I suppose we never know for certain where secrets are hidden.
Love,
Gay, the family storyteller
June 24, 2013
