Last night I made cookies.  A new recipe, something I noticed in a magazine the last time I was at the library, all ginger and dark chocolate.  Before I began  blending the butter and dark brown sugar I automatically reached for my “cookie spoon.”  Because I can’t make cookies without the special spoon that has been passed down to me from my mother, and her mother before.

It doesn’t always happen, but on this evening as I pulled the spoon out of the drawer I thought about my grandmother.   She made the best spice cookies I’ve ever eaten, out of the crumbs of other deserts, probably with this very spoon.  She was born in 1888 and lived to be 94 years old.  She had a hard but  good life, just like most people, and during her lifetime the world changed.  She lived through the depression, feeding her family from the farm, drove a wagon pulled by horses, and learned to drive a car as an adult out in the cornfield.  I’m not sure that she ever truly believed we sent men to the moon.

I guess her life wasn’t anything extraordinary, a woman raising her family through changing times.  It happens everywhere – it’s happening now.  But when I think of the things she witnessed and learned to accept as normal, from cars to telephones to planes I am in awe.  Anyway, the warmest memories I have are of all of us sitting around her big table in the old farmhouse, eating something wonderful that she cooked for us.  And sneaking her  cookies when we thought she wasn’t looking.

My cookies were great.  But not quite as good as the ones she made from leftover crumbs.  I hope she and my mother are pleased that I still use their spoon.  I think they are.