Lindsay Eland - Middle Grade Author

http://shrinkingvioletpromotions.blogspot.com/

Halloween is coming up quick.

Pumpkins are starting to make their debut on porches, hoping above all else that they will last till that last night of October where they can smile out into the night. Candy of all kinds and sorts bide their time contentedly in over-size bags until the moment when “trick or treat” is sounded out and  they will be dumped unceremoniously into pillowcases, plastic bags, and pumpkin bowls. Costumes line the aisles of every store where kids can pick to be anything from an oversized hot dog to a gothic teen mummy or a UPS man.

And I loved carving pumpkins, pulling out the gooey insides and then roasting the seeds in the oven, setting a small candle in the middle and watch it flicker in the dark. And the mounds of candy: snickers, milky ways, butterfingers, gum, smarties, and those orange peanuts that I always threw out. But my favorite part of Halloween was always the costumes. Pretending to be something else or someone else for just one  night.

Yet there is a piece of us reflected in each of those costumes we so meticulously chose.

A piece of us that liked to reveal to everyone that underneath our seeming normalcy  we were really adventurous like a hobo, mysterious as a ghost, courageous like a super hero, beautiful like a princess, or silly as a giant hamburger.

We show everyone that really we are more than we seem at first glance.

And we are.

Sunday afternoon in our small kitchen in the house on Storch Road. I was in seventh grade and the scene is still vivd in my mind. There was a brick floor, blue wallpaper or curtains…blue. The telephone hung on the wall by the back door, the curly cord hanging almost down to the floor, a tiny kitchen table that held more magazines and odds and ends then people or plates or dishes or spoons. You could reach your arms out and almost touch both the sink and the refrigerator. It smelled like dirt in the summer from my dad’s garden, and fireplace smoke in the winter. Tiny, cozy, warm.

I remember standing at the counter with my mom, a package of nestle chocolate chips settled on the counter in front of us, two shiny silver bowls lined up with all the measuring cups and spoons within arms reach. Egg carton, baking soda, flour, sugars, butter.

Baking chocolate chip cookies from scratch.

I don’t remember how it came about that I made the cookies with my mom, watching her carefully measure, pour, add, mix, beat, and even taste the batter as it slowly came together into dough. Maybe I asked to help her, or maybe she asked me if I wanted to help, but either way, it was almost  every single Sunday afternoon after that day that she and I baked cookies or brownies or cake together. And they were never perfectly round or perfectly the same like cookies from the store are.

But I like imperfection. It makes life and love and Sunday afternoons interesting and memorable.

I remember the immense satisfaction of pulling the imperfect homemade cookies from the oven. Smelling them. Watching my dad come in and pick up one, two, three, going on and on about how wonderful they were.

And they were wonderful.

They were wonderful and delicious because she and I had made them, created them from bits of ingredients that alone, taste bland or awful, but when added together made something scrumptious.

And I know that I make many metaphors to life when I write these blogs, and maybe you’re sick of hearing them, but I can’t help it. Each day that we live and in each moment we breathe in and out there is the bland and the awful, the scrumptious and the delicious. Sometimes the moments are undercooked, sometimes burnt, sometimes missing something, and other times just as near to perfect as we can imagine.

But we’ve created it and lived it and now baking chocolaty desserts on Sunday afternoons mean more than just cookies.