Heart-shaped Memory

I was kneeling on one of the dining room chairs, and watching in admiration as she piped each name with precision. The cookies seemed giant. They were definitely over-sized, but being a small child, they may not have been quite as big as I remember them. Heart-shaped sugar cookies, iced with the palest pink icing, and then scripted with the names of our family members – one for each of them, in white icing. This is one of the most vivid memories I have of my mom. She died when I was five years old, and I can't be sure if I had just turned four, or five, when she and I made this special Valentine's Day surprise for everyone, but I do remember not being able to contain my excitement! “When are they coming?” I would ask. My four older siblings were at school, and my Dad was at work. I just could not wait for them to get home so that they could see what we had made for them!

It's a very tiny memory, but it is one that I have held onto my whole life, thus far. Was it the special time that we were sharing? Was the anticipation of presenting the family with this most wonderful surprise? Was it the deliciousness of the cookies? Perhaps my Mom had already been sick, and this was a rare time when she was home and feeling well enough to do anything with me. I guess I will never know why I have held this memory so close to my heart, except, simply, that it is of her.

There is a lot of pressure on a woman who has grown up without her mother. It is in the form of having unrealistic expectations on herself, of being EVERYTHING to her own children, that she didn't have growing up. Of course no mom is perfect, so we take the mom who bakes, the mom with the spotless house, the mom who threw the best birthday parties, the mom who cooked amazing meals, the mom who signed her kids up for anything and everything that they showed the slightest bit of interest in, the mom who went on every school trip, and of course the mom who took her daughters shopping for clothes, and we put them all together to make one SUPER MOM. That is who we try to be. Maybe all women try to be her too, but we will kill ourselves making it happen.

I have made it a tradition to bake and decorate sugar cookies for every occasion. Even before I had kids, I would make them for my friends and family. Now that I have kids, even though I mostly enjoy making them, I do feel obligated to do this activity with my them. As crazy as it sounds, the few times that I have not made sugar cookies for a holiday, for one reason or another, I have felt sad and resentful about it. THEY'RE ONLY COOKIES! But for me, they are much more than that. They represent one special moment that I was able to share with my mother, in the short time that I had her. So even if, after a particularily disasterous sugar-cookie-making-and-decorating experience, I may say “never again”, I know that I will always have the desire to build on this tradition.