Who stole the cookie?

I got a prezzie in the mail from dear friends, the dearest kind of friend really, and it made me cry. It wasn't something I registered for on my fancy baby registry. It wasn't something I begged them to get me when asked if there was something I needed. It was something I mentioned I wanted to have in our home as our kids grew up. I mentioned it in passing several months ago and a few days ago it landed on my door step. A cookie jar! It's a goofy cookie jar in the form of a ceramic blue monster who looks quite endearing. It came with a 'sweet tooth' recipe book of our favorite cookies growing up from moms and grandmas and family friends and a 'Someone in Zimbabwe Loves Me' tshirt. The jar sits on my kitchen table and is stocked with snickerdoodles, the cookie that always seemed to be on hand at her house when we were kids.

I want a cookie jar in our house to help make it home for our kids. Partly because a balanced diet includes sweets and snacks and cookies are pretty traditional for both categories. But mostly to build memories. Sounds strange, I know, but it's true.

We always had a cookie jar growing up. It sat on top of our fridge and I'm not sure it was ever an actual cookie jar but it's where cookies were stored. Growing up, it was a tupperware-like container of some kind. We could only reach it if we dragged a chair across the room and stood on it, giving mom plenty of time to step in and enforce portion control. In my high school years it became (and still is) a tall white metal tin with a lid on it. A country kitchen style cookie jar. This was probably because right around that time we had 6 extra teenagers living with us, my extended family if you will. We were only supposed to have 2 cookies a day and in fact I think it was only supposed to be 2 cookies, 3 days a week. It's not that we tried to take more than we were supposed to, it's just what happened when 7 out of the 9 kids in the house could reach the cookies without a chair and all 9 of us were allowed to have friends over. It probably explains why the tin was so big and why Mom stopped making regular batches of cookies and started baking monster cookies. One batch makes 24 dozen!

Eating cookies was not a highlight of my childhood, it wasn't what memories were formed around but it definitely is a little detail of what home was for me. Cookies in the cookie jar. There weren't always cookies, in fact many times it was a treat when they were there, but they were one more way Mom gave us better than what we needed and provided not just a safe, but a comfortable, happy home. The kind where memories are made and time together is sweet because we're loved and thought of in the little ways too. That's why I want a cookie jar for my kids.