By Dr. Kaylene Armstrong, adviser
April 28, 2020
I told Connor it was a cookie birthday party. He wasn’t sure what that was, but he and his brother were game. Just like everyone in Alva, they had been staying home during the pandemic and were willing to go anywhere and do almost anything—even a cookie party they had never heard of before.
They arrived about 7 p.m. I turned on the oven to preheat while we molded my favorite gingersnap cookie dough into balls between our palms. Then we rolled them in cinnamon-sugar before flattening the balls and placing them on the baking sheet. I set the timer for 7 ½ minutes.
While the cookies baked, we talked. Mostly, I talked to their mother. They always bring her along when they come to visit. After all, Connor is only 4 ½ and his brother Bubba is 22 months. Though they live just next door, they would never be allowed to walk alone over to my house.
Casey Beth and I talked about all the things we usually talk about: the sad shape of each of our weed-infested lawns, her husband’s new job, her plans for painting and upgrading her house, each of our various craft projects, her new sewing machine.
Finally, the timer beeped and the cookies came out of the oven, a perfect dark brown molasses color that wafted a gingery smell throughout the house.
“We have to let them set before we can take them off the tray,” I explained.
“How long?” Connor immediately wanted to know.
“A few minutes.”
Connor screwed up his face, trying to figure out how long that might be. When you are only 4 ½, time doesn’t always make sense. Is a few minutes as long as “just a second”? That’s what grownups always say when you have to wait. If so, it just might be forever.
He sighed and carefully monitored the progress of cooling as he eyed the misshapen rounds.
But soon the cookies were off the tray, yet still too warm to eat.
Bubba was getting anxious. “Peas, Nana, peas,” he pleaded as he pointed at the cookies, his lower lip protruding in a pouty face.
“Sorry,” his mother said apologetically. “I don’t know why he calls you Nana.”
“No problem,” I responded, secretly smiling inside as I remembered how my own children had called one of our older neighbors Grandma Grace. “A couple of my own grandkids call me Mimi, not grandma.”
I am well aware that Bubba doesn’t really think I am his grandmother. Actually, he doesn’t know what a grandmother is. At his age, Nana is what you call a white-haired older lady. Any youngish woman would be Mama, and all men are Dada. Still, with my own grandchildren more than a thousand miles away, it’s nice to feel grandmotherly to a couple of little boys who don’t often see their own grandmothers.
In no time, the cookies were ready to eat. Everyone grabbed one, and we continued to stand around the bar munching and talking.
Connor stood on a folding footstool I usually keep tucked behind my oak computer desk in my husband’s office just off the kitchen. He was tall enough to reach the cookies without help. Bubba balanced on a kitchen chair pulled up to the end of the bar and his mother broke off pieces of cookie and handed them to him.
One by one we devoured the entire batch. Connor literally ran the last cookie to my husband, Mr. Bob, who was busy playing video games on his computer in his office.
I’ve been making these cookies for about 40 years. No matter what the event, if I need to bring cookies, I make gingersnaps, and they are always a hit. Most people think of them as Christmas cookies, but they have been my birthday cookies for many years. I make the cookies soft and gooey without the crunchiness that the name gingersnaps implies. The secret is baking them just until they fall and then snatching them out of the oven before the snap has a chance to develop.
I usually make a triple batch and take them to campus on my birthday so all my classes that day, as well as any faculty and staff I might see, can celebrate with me. My birthday almost always falls on the last week of classes before finals, so cookies are a welcome “the end is near!” kind of treat.
But his year, my students wouldn’t be eating any cookies. Because of the corona virus, my classes are all on Zoom. My students might be able to see how good they looked, but the smell and taste of fresh gingerbread just doesn’t transmit over Zoom.
So I only mixed up half of a batch, enough for about three dozen small cookies.
That morning I had baked enough to take two small paper plates to other professors working near my office. I’d saved the rest of the dough for a cookie party that night with Connor and Bubba.
As we munched the cookies, Cassey Beth and I continued to talk.
Connor finally broke into the grown-up conversation. “Is this really a party?” he demanded. “Is this all we do?”
I could see his little mind trying to figure out what was going on. He’d been to birthday parties before and they always involved more than cookies. If this was a real birthday party, surely games must be planned, presents opened, treats passed out.
“It IS a party,” I tried to explain. “A cookie party is what you do when you’re my age.”
He looked at me dubiously, unsure if I was teasing him as I had done a few days before.
We had been planting my patio flower boxes when I had asked who had been spilling dirt all over the patio and not in the boxes. He had shrugged and hung his head.
“Was it a ghost, maybe?” I had teased. “Maybe one named Conner?”
“I’m not a ghost,” he had insisted, a puzzled look on his face as he wondered why I would think he was such an apparition.
I had realized then that he might not understand I was joking, and if I didn’t straighten this out then his mother would be calling to find out what ghosts I have at my house. So I quickly explained that I was just teasing him and that ghosts aren’t real.
“Yes, they are,” he had said emphatically. “I see them on Halloween.”
No amount of explanation could convince him that the costumed people were not really ghosts.
Now, as we ate cookies, I could tell Connor’s little brain was still thinking this cookie party idea through some more, trying to fathom how this could be a real birthday celebration.
“Where’s your cake and candles?” he asked suspiciously, perhaps thinking I was keeping it hidden.
“I don’t have a cake. I like gingerbread cookies instead.”
“I have cake for my birthday,” he assured me, not adding what he must have been thinking—proper birthday parties include cake.
A half hour later the party was over, and it was time for two little boys to get ready for bed.
“Thanks for coming to my party,” I said as they headed out the door.
“You’re welcome,” Conner replied.
“Wacum,” Bubba chimed in.
We did “air” high-fives because you can’t hug any more.
Maybe next year, I can get back to my traditional celebration with gingersnaps for my grown-up students on campus and not on a screen.
But I’ll have to remember to save some cookies for a new tradition—a cookie party with two of my favorite guys.