The Loving Hopeful Version

A chair pushed over, close to the counter. I climbed up so I could help. Bigger hands than mine searched the cupboards and refrigerator for all the ingredients, a wooden spoon, and a white mixing bowl with red chickens printed on it.

First, we put in all the wet stuff – eggs, vanilla, shortening. Next came the sugar and brown sugar. My hands did their best to hold the bowl and move the spoon around and around, but again bigger hands came to the rescue – one holding the bowl steady, one closing around my hand to help stir.

Flour is messy, but we needed two and a quarter cups. We filled up the measuring cup, heaping with flour. The big hands showed me how to use the straight edge of a butter knife to tap and scrape, so that we ended up with one even cup to add to the bowl. Then one more cup, followed by a quarter cup measured in the same fashion. A teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of baking soda.

Stir s-l-o-w-l-y. Or be covered in flour. The choice was mine.

Last but definitely not least, chocolate chips. (And don’t forget to snitch a few off the top before dumping in the cupful.) Stir and fold those in and then?

A spoonful of cookie dough for me, and one for the owner of the big hands, smiles all around.

That same bowl was passed down to me many years later. I used it to make cookies most often, and sometimes mix up other yummy things. One summer I was moving out of a house I had been renting a room in, and the bottom of a box came undone as I was carrying it. The bowl fell to the floor and shattered, a little piece of my heart with it.

That bowl was more than a bowl. It served as a reminder of good memories and of those who took (and continue to take) the time to teach me so many things. It was something that never failed to bring a smile to my face when I used it.

It was like a piece of home.

Last Saturday, my husband and I walked into a store in South Minneapolis and almost immediately, he says to me, “Sooooonja, look!” pointing at a rather full cabinet of Pyrex. Pyrex that had “chickens” printed on them.

Mind you, they weren’t actually chickens – my child brain didn’t know what else to call them, so I had just been calling it “the chicken bowl” for literally my entire life. I learned later that this print in the Pyrex world was called “Friendship” and it came out in 1971.

Anyway, my husband was not wrong. There were multiple sets of Pyrex with this print on it. But there was only one bowl, one with red “chickens” on it (the orange in the pattern had come off, probably in the dishwasher just like my mom’s) and it was just the right size.

That night I mixed up cookie dough, wet stuff first, then sugar. Tapping and scraping the flour, carefully stirring in the baking soda and salt with it. Snitching a few chocolate chips and stirring in the rest.

Those cookies were delicious. They tasted like home.

I’m so thankful for a husband who loves me so much he wants to see me happy in the smallest things. I looked for that bowl here and there for over 7 years, every time I went into an antique store. I don’t know if he knew it had been that long (since the bowl broke before I met him) but it didn’t matter – he just knew it was something that for some reason would bring me joy, and he was on board with that. What a man.

I’m also so thankful to my mom, for continuing to offer her “bigger hands” when I need help with something. My hands are probably physically bigger than hers since I passed her up in height quite a while ago, but hers hold so much wisdom and love. She’s a pretty great lady.

I remember making batches of cookies with my brothers and sisters too, and I know my dad ate a lot of them.

I’ll just sign off today by saying this: I am so grateful for family – my family of origin and the people we’ve added along the way, and the one I have now with Steve and Lizzy pup. I hope you all know how special you are to me.

Mixin’ with the chickens,
Sonja K.