Hiding Christmas Cookies

My mother would begin baking cookies for Christmas not too long after Thanksgiving. She baked them during the day when Dad was working and the rest of us were at school. She left no evidence of her activities and made no comments that would alert us. And, she hid them. She hid them all over the place and she must have really enjoyed it too because she did it for many years including the years that I was gone to college.

Somewhere along the way I discovered this activity and would systematically purloin the cached bounty but did it carefully so as not to alert anyone looking at the goods by moving the cookies around to suggest an untouched appearance. It was a good job but not good enough to fool the baker. And so began a cat and mouse game of hiding and snitching that lasted until after I was married. It was even mentioned during visits to the nursing facility where mom spent her last few years.

Last night I made some Christmas cookies and since I live alone there was no reason to hide any of them. They  sit willfully tempting in tin containers in the kitchen. But as I made them, frosted them and tucked them into the tins for later enjoyment I thought of mom and the Christmases past when she would make them for me and hide them and hope that I would find them.

©Herb Ratliff, December 8, 2011, All Rights Reserved