the chocolate chip cookie

This is it.  The gooder than good, greater than great, bester than best chocolate chip recipe, direct from my cupboard to your screen. 

It's the recipe that my son uses when it's just one of those perfect days to stir up some delicious goodness. A Cat in the Hat kinda day like this past Saturday when the temperatures dropped again, the snow swirled as the winds whipped it all into a winter frenzy that kept us indoors bundled up looking for something to do.   

I'm well beyond the point of having to help Tyson bake.  At 16 he's made his own culinary creations for quite some time.  My job is loyal assistant;  making sure all the ingredients are in the cupboard, finding the mixing tools and doing the dishes. Yes, he could do all these things as a solitary endeavour, we know that, but we both relax into our respective duties like clockwork.  We have a routine in our hanging out in the kitchen time.  Beyond the baking we chat, we listen to music, discuss current events, share ideas and joke about funny bits and pieces of who we are and the adventures we've had. 

It's simple.  We didn't have to travel to get to this place.  It didn't cost us a zillion dollars.  No time off work.  Just time. Time together, relaxed and unhurried.   Time that builds a foundation for conversations that are necessary when life is not going so smoothly.  Time that locks in memories for when we're not together and we need a comforting thought to hold onto.  Tyson shared with me that when he was sick last week all he wanted was cookies...our homemade cookies, an affirmation that these chocolate chip cookies are more than what they appear to be... in their essence they are love... delicious, fun and simple.  If we just wanted the cookies we could buy them at the store.  But that's it's more than that. 

Mary Oliver, in her poem, "Mindfulness" speaks so eloquently about how we find beauty and wisdom in the "ordinary, the common, the very drab...".  This precious time of baking with my son using the same recipe, following the same process, playing the same roles, resulting in the same common cookie is far from ordinary.  It is the "untrimmable light" that shines brightly in my heart long after the last morel is devoured. 

Where can you find light in the greyness of life?  Where can you find joy in the common?  With whom can you find beauty in the every day?   The answers are as close as your next breath...in the rhythm of your  beating heart.  They are as delicate as the opening of the tulips on the kitchen table and as quiet as the sound of the whispering winds on a peaceful summer's eve.  Are you listening?  What does it say?  What do you need to do to feel this soft world? 

Mindful by Mary Oliver

Every day

     I see or hear

           something

                  that more or less

kills me

       with delight,

            that leaves me

                   like a needle

in the haystack

     of light.

          It was what I was born for -

                to look, to listen,

to lose myself

     inside this soft world-

         to instruct myself

             over and over

in joy,

   and acclamation.

       Nor am I talking

              about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,

     the very extravagant -

           but of the ordinary,

                 the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.

      Oh, good scholar,

           I say to myself,

                how can you help

but grow wise

      with such teachings

           as these-

               the untrimmable light

of the world,

    the ocean's shine,

         the prayers that are made

             out of grass?