She is still sitting in the kitchen, looking at the recycling bin where the gift wrap is stuffed in. It was for the gift her husband had given to his daughter, her step-daughter, earlier this evening. He's now snoring in bed; she can hear him in this otherwise very quiet house in the middle of the forest. The city girl had left and is now probably just arriving in her tiny apartment with the huge machine.
She still has a grin on. She can't say she loves her, but they have a cordial relationship. Her grin is final stage of the evolution from her surprise and eye-rolling, before later, probably, everything disappears and this episode won't remain in her mind much more than just something funny to bring up later. Maybe at her wedding, if she ever gets married, that poor girl.
She puts her chamomile tea down and looks at the crumbled up gift wrap again. Purple with silver stars, not your typical Christmas wrapping, but still, it's what she likes, that young woman who was a teenager when they first met. When they first met the teenager was shy, and the woman was not any less nervous, even though she was an adult. She had heard so much about the little lady from the man she had started dating and that things had gotten serious quite quickly. He had been a divorcee for nearly ten years before they met. She now remembers that first day when the young lady shook her hand with her cold, clammy little hand, softer, full of suspicion like her eyes. Then the young lady presented her with a box of chocolate chip cookies, which were the best she would ever have. Later she soon found out that the girl did this because her dad begged her to, to get her to like her future step-mother, to impress her because she loved chocolate. Did she do it out reluctance? Probably not, because like every food, you can't make a great cookie with spite, but rather only with love. The woman sitting in the kitchen is no cook, but she enjoys good food, and before she had met her future step-daughter, she was told by her future husband many many times how great a cook and baker the daughter was. And it was from this line of culinary excellence that she learned a bit about the life of this girl, who saw her parents fight and be angry and be bitter before she turned 4 when they finally separated and tore the girl's soul in two. She remembers a touching moment when she was in her future husband's arm, when he told her the story of the sugar cookie.
It was three months after she turned five, about half a year after they informed the little girl of the "divorce", which meant her parents no longer lived together, probably won't be kissing or hugging each other. That day he was feeling miserable, feeling angry, bitter, and even hateful. He lost his daughter in the settlement where his lawyer told him he had no chance of winning custody with him being unemployed. But he got to see her whenever he wanted. Still, he didn't because he was so ashamed of his failure as a husband as well as father that he couldn't see the girl's face without breaking down. So after the first few weeks of the settlement, in which he saw the girl daily, he started to see her less. He knew that her ex-wife and others only interpreted this as an obvious sign that the man was a bad father, as well as a bad husband. So the less frequently he went to see her, the less he wanted to see his treasure.
That day he was just sitting in his bed. Thank God he was never a drinker, but there was also no other way for him to release his pain. He cried a lot, and for a month now he hasn't gotten out of the house. He hasn't really eaten much. His Mother would travel hours to get him food, but she was shunned, though being a Mother, you never get discouraged from taking care of your own creation. Besides her he hadn't seen anyone, and not even the trees outside.
Then the bell rang. And after it kept ringing he dragged himself out of bed and went to the door. He saw his treasure standing there, with the trees of the forest in her background, plus the red SUV where her mother must have been waiting impatiently. It was a gentle autumn day and the trees were on fire with their red and golden leaves. He couldn't believe his eyes. Maybe he's still sleeping in his depression dreams. She was still very short, looking at him with a big smile. He lowers himself to her height and gives her a big, long hug. There was immediate shame. Her little girl came to see him, when he should have been going to see her. Then he asked, "What are you doing here, Pumpkin?" Obviously to see him, the lazy sloth that never showed up the past month. She said, "Mommy said granny isn't making you her special sugar cookies anymore." "Granny" is not his mother, but his ex-mother-in-law. She continued, "I thought that's why you haven't been coming to see me because you wouldn't get sugar cookies from her. So," she said, as she showed her a basket covered with a purple cloth with white flowers stitched on it, "I made you some. I asked Granny for the recipe, and I made it like I saw her do it before."
The engine of the SUV was now off. But he didn't notice. What he noticed was the girl's innocent and beautiful eyes. Then he looked at the basket and saw the strangely shaped yellow disks. Tears started flowing down as he wrapped himself around her, almost violently. "Are you all right, Daddy?" she asked, "Are you hurt?"
He was too ashamed to let her see his tears, his twisted face. The pain was coming out now, thanks to this five-year old girl who managed to make sugar cookies. When the pain subsided, he released her. He was smiling now. He takes out a cookie. It was still wet and doughy inside the disk and nearly burned around the edges. The taste of egg yolk is still discernible and the edges crumble easily. But he wasn't paying attention to these details. These details came years later when he and his ex-wife became friends and she told him how the cookies really were, not how he remembered it, which was the most amazing cookies in the world. And ever since that day, he would look forward to seeing his daughter and her baked goods. She had been baking ever since than, and regardless of how good her baked goods really were, he was her biggest fan.
Now many years later, now that he has a different life and a woman who can really share a life with him, now that she is about to go to college, he gives her her first KitchenAid stand mixer, the soul-mate for any serious baker. When she unwrapped it on this very kitchen table where her step-mother is sitting now with a grin, she started crying. She remembered immediately the sugar cookies, about how much she had missed her dad thinking he didn't come because there were no more sugar cookies for him. How it was the beginning of their baker-eater relationship that lasts till today. He started crying too. It's been a very long and tough road since that day when his own, five-year old daughter rescued him from his self-deprecating misery. Father and daughter held on to each other in front of this red, emotionless machine for a good couple of minutes while tears flowed afresh.
She knew about the sugar story, but she thought it must have also been because she was going away to a college far far away. But it was still to cry over a machine, over a distant memory.
