Cookie Mischief, by Susan Baganz

Cookie Mischief

 Susan M. Baganz

When I was a kid, the oldest of five at the time (my youngest sister came a bit later), my mom would bake a lot of cookies for Christmas. She was like a machine. She would pack five gallon ice cream buckets with cookies and freeze them to take them out for Christmas Eve.

Well, it seems that my brothers couldn’t wait that long and this one particular Christmas my mother went to get the cookies only to find—empty buckets.  She was ticked. It wasn’t a very happy Christmas Eve for any of us. Even though I had not eaten the cookies I got in trouble too. Who can prove innocence at that point. Grrrr.

Spin the clock forward a good 20 years or more. My mom was still baking lots of cookies and freezing them. My sister would come home for lunch and my brothers had keys to the house. The cookies would disappear. My mother would bake more but couldn’t figure out what had happened because—hadn’t she already baked cookies? Talk about a mean way to mess with a mom. She kept saying “I think I’m losing my marbles.”

Finally she gave up. She was all baked out and there were no cookies. Christmas Eve came and the family was gathered and she apologized because she had lost her marbles and there were no Christmas cookies. Lo and behold a large box was presented for her to open. Inside were ALL the Christmas cookies she had baked. Some of them mere crumbs from being jostled around in a big box. Kind of a “remember when?”  Moment. Not a happy memory for mom, though.

I’m not sure if my mom was happy or sad. Happy she really hadn’t lost her marbles to be sure –but angry that her sons had again played a mean trick on her by taking all the cookies. In their defense, this time they did not eat them! And as I did not have a key to the house I could remain innocent of all wrongdoing. Whew!

She also got a bag of marbles.

My mom no longer bakes cookies for Christmas. She doesn’t trust her children not to steal them and now she has to go gluten free in her diet so she doesn’t use flour either.

Just a fun Christmas memory – one my mother even shares now. Things are often funnier in hindsight. 

About the author: Susan is the mother to three children, a bird and a dog. She only bakes cookies her kids can eat right away and her own marbles were gone a long time ago. She is also the author of Angel on Fourth Street, a short story romance, part of an anthology collection called I Choose You, available through OakTara Press.