This post originally appeared on my blogger site in Sept. 2014.
We are bakers. The recipe on the bag of chocolate chips when the days are hard and we need a quick and trusted pick me up. Cracking open a new cookbook and jamming to the tunes of Stevie Wonder when the days are good and we're feeling adventurous. Filling bowls of berries under the warm summer sun, coming home to layer with fresh shortcakes and whipped cream and savoring as the sun sets on another summer day. Pulling the same berries from the freezer on a cold evening and dumping them into a buttery crust to relish by the fireside months later. He has been there, since the beginning, in a sling or on our hip until he got big enough to stand on tiptoes and steel fingers full of butter and sugar and sweet things and then ask for more.
The absence of buttery goodness in our house is a sure sign of something amiss. Like a puzzle whose pieces were all in their place, dumped out and now scrambled in a pile. Our family of three is now four and fitting the new puzzle pieces together takes time. Staring over the pieces, sifting through, until the "aha" moment when you find that one piece you were looking for.
And we've found one piece. At least for today. We found our time to bake, make, taste, and dance a little too. A new recipe at that, though Stevie will have to wait for fear he'll wake the sleeping babe. As my little boy sits on the counter, socks caked in flour, legs smeared with butter, mixing, mixing- my mind flashes forward. To years from now, a little girl sitting on the counter in just the same way, her brother away at school. Just as I flashed backwards the first time I put her in the wrap snuggled against my body. To a baby boy nearly three years ago, in that very same position, that very same wrap, and almost that very same face.
This is just a season in our lives. Just like the cookies we bake, it will be gone before I know it, and I'll stand there, wondering, where did it go?
It takes time to fit a good puzzle together. For now, we'll savor this one moment when this one piece of us fit perfectly into our day. And trust that we'll get there, find the rest of the pieces, fitting the intricacies of this new family together.
Eventually.
In the meantime, we'll share another cookie.