I remember many things about my mother’s kitchen. It was so clean you could have eaten off of the floor. It had a pantry that was always well stocked. No matter where she lived, there was always something yellow in it and many things that came from the Mexican heritage. (She LOVED Mexican food, and people and things!) But mostly, I remember the cookie jar, Dumbo the Flying Elephant, who was always full of some kind of homemade cookie!
In the beginning, Dumbo looked exactly like the cute little gray Dumbo in the Disney movie. As the years wore on , the color wore off of Dumbo. And, most of my life he looked as he does now. Off white everywhere but still recognizable.
He is a two-sided Dumbo… one side shows Dumbo with the feather in his mouth; the other side shows him without it. I use to imagine that story as a child, and say to myself that the feather was love… someone wanting to help Dumbo find his place in the world for the unusual individual that he was. The side without the feather? That was Dumbo complete, confidant and ready to take on the world. I, in some way, saw myself as Dumbo when I would reach in there and take a cookie… as if I would be transformed through the eating of it.
My mother really loved this cookie jar. She loved to look at Dumbo, with his gigantic ears; and she loved to fill him up with cookies! Mom would watch her family eye the cookie jar to see if she’d put anything new and yummy into little Dumbo’s tummy. (When I think how we kids… and this includes my dad, the biggest kid of all… man handled Dumbo just to see if there were cookies inside, it’s a wonder how this well loved container managed to stay in one piece over the years. Then again, perhaps the great love that we all shared with Mom for this fixture of honor in our kitchen was a part of that.
When Mom came to live with us, I told her that she could bring everything she wanted. After I said that, I recall praying that
God would take my home and multiply the space in it the way Jesus multiplied the fishes and loaves. Among the incredible number of items she chose to bring, God made room for even that cookie jar.
She was at first uncomfortable with the idea of living with us because she felt that she was going to be a burden on Hubby and me. But when Bill said to her, “You’ve been my mother longer than my own mother had a chance to be mother. I love you… Please make us happy and live with us,”… Well, she fell into his arms and that was that.
Mom wanted responsibilities while she was with us. This can be a tricky thing because these loved ones like my mother are getting ready to “exit.” They need to feel they’re still pulling their own weight, but they also can’t have a responsibility that is not in their best interests or the interests of other household members. I gave her one thing that was exercise and one that was a loving habit.
“Mom, what would you think of putting away the clean dishes?” She liked that. “And, how would you like to man the cookie jar?” She really liked that one! For one thing, it meant that the cookie jar was still really hers, and with a responsibility attached to it, this gave her back some of the freedom that seemed to have been taken from her life when she could no longer live on her own.
So that was the way it was. She made snicker doodles. She made cut out sugar cookies (we did this together). And most of all, she made her special recipe of chocolate chip cookies. When the bros came to visit, they’d see that cookie jar and head right for it… “Grandma, does this have the chocolate chip cookies in it?” She knew it was their favorite so the answer was, “Yes… just two… don’t spoil your dinner.”
As Mom’s health continued to fail her, White Matter Disease began to take her memory. She could not remember the rooms in her last home. She lost the ability to balance her own checkbook. The one thing that never faded, though, was her love of family and sharing her cookies.
It is a painful reality that the body’s failure is relentless as we move away from this life to travel to the next. My mother reached a point where she couldn’t prepare those cookies anymore. She didn’t have the strength to stand and bake. So I made the cookies for her, and she was still in charge of Dumbo. A few months later, her pancreas began to fail so she couldn’t eat the homemade cookies I baked for her. We didn’t give up… she needed to feel her life, to have some sort of charge of it. So we bought the diabetic ones. And I will tell you the truth… When those yucky old replacement cookies came out of Dumbo, they were every bit as much fun as the ones we baked! “Just two, Carolyn… don’t spoil your dinner.” We celebrated our lives with cookies from Dumbo and forever looked up! It just seemed natural to continue to do it.
Now that she’s gone to God, I can sit here at my computer and gaze into the kitchen to where Dumbo still resides. It isn’t filled with cookies like when Mom was here. But Dumbo is still giving us love. I look at him and a thousand memories flood through my mind’s eye. Homemade cookies and picnics, homemade cookies at the end of a tough day, homemade cookies on holidays, and homemade cookies just because my mother loved us that much. And always, always, I see her beautiful face, her smile and I hear her lilting voice saying, “You can have two cookies… don’t want to spoil your dinner.” We may not have ever spoiled our dinner with two cookies, but Mom spoiled us rotten with her love. I hope, in the end, she felt I did the same for her while she made her home with Hubby and me. “I love you, Mom. Be well in heaven.”
May you also be well and have only two cookies, so you don’t spoil your dinner!
Best… Carolyn Thomas Temple