Mom baked cookies

My mom loved everybody. Personal space be damned; mom was a hugger. Everybody knew my mom's smile and hugs and of course: her cookies.

Mom was a professional woman. She had a 4 year college degree and was a registered nurse. She only worked as a nurse when she needed to. She was always a full-time mother and housewife. I guess you could say she was liberated because she was free to do what she wanted; and what she wanted was to raise her boys and take care of her household. She loved housework. My mother ironed our tee shirts just for the joy of doing it! She also had dinner on the table promptly at 5:30 each night. Somewhere in there she found time to bake. Apple pie and strawberry shortcake were seasonal delights but brownies and cookies were regulars.

When my bothers and I grew up and moved away, mom retired from nursing and did volunteer work at Northside and North Fulton Hospital. She never let on to them that she was a nurse. This way she could care for people (the way she loved) in an environment she knew well, without any pressure. With a home that didn't have three growing boys and their friends constantly messing it up, and with a whole lot less laundry to do, mom baked more. She settled on sugar cookies.

Now Mom wasn't the greatest baker in the World.  She did cook with a whole lot of love and it came through even when the edges were a bit brown and the texture somewhat overly crunchy (hard as rocks).  Of course, Mom firmly believed a cold glass of milk could fix any miscalculation in baking times.  The fact is: she didn't pay a whole lot of attention to baking times and everything got baked at 350 degrees.  

 I'm not really sure where the sugar cookie recipe Mom used came from.  When I was small and insecure Mom's form of therapy involved teaching me to bake brownies or chocolate chip cookies which she never used a written recipe for (I think that this is why she never baked bread).  The improvisational method of baking has it's successes and failures but I never remember a bad batch of brownies.  Until later in life though sugar cookies were reserved for Chirstmas cutout cookies. Between having to wait for the dough to chill, adding lots of food coloring and decorating with colored nonpareils, sugar cookies were a major production to be eagerly anticipated.  Still never a recipe. Sometimes they were hard and sometimes the green Christmas trees looked like they had the blight, but they were always tasty.  When she "retired" and sugar cookies became a weekly thing for Mom she actually wrote down her recipe and Dad sent it in to a magazine contest which she won.  Even after that I don't think she ever referred to her own recipe.  It was this, that and a pinch of something else.  Chill the dough, cut them out (simple rounds now) throw them in a 350 degree oven for awhile.  Nothing fancy, but they filled the cookie jar.

That cookie jar never stayed full though.  If you visited Mom and Dad's the cookie jar came off the fridge and you had a cookie.  Most likely you left with a bag of cookies.  The mailman got cookies.  The UPS man left with cookies.  The flower delivery person (Dad loved to send Mom flowers as often as he could afford to) left with cookies. The preacher and every neighbor knew my Mom's sugar cookies.  She did venture out once in awhile and try molasses cookies (my Grandmother's specialty) ginger snaps, or snickerdoodles.  But she always came back to sugar cookies and everybody got them.

When my mom died peacefully in her sleep we had to decide upon a vessel of some sort to put her ashes in for the memorial/interment service.  Even though we thought it might raise a few eyebrows, there was really only one thing we could use: her cookie jar.  At the funeral when the pall was removed and there sat Mom's earthly remains inside her cookie jar,  there was not a murmur, chuckle or any little old ladies gasping to be heard.  There were a whole bunch of smiles though.  Everyone knew Mom baked cookies.