On that sunny Tuesday morning, the second day of preschool, students and parents made play dough together. The sober science of heating water and scooping flour prevented us from gazing out the ivy-shaded windows. The new colleagues worked wooden puzzles, trying to fit house or dog into the empty space shaped like house or dog. Four small engineers attempted to scrape the contents of the sandbox into a single, girl-high mound.
We emerged into a new world, one that looked eerily like the old. The clouds still drifted white and the leaves still shimmered yellow. But the sky had gone silent. Seven hundred miles away gaped an empty space shaped like two skyscrapers.
At home, we waited, diverting wide eyes from the fireball on the muted TV. Before we could compose an explanation, before we thought to offer blood or send boots, we made cookies.
We understood this effort to be futile. No cookie ever held an airplane aloft, or a battle at bay. But the ritual offered solace.
Butter melds with sugar into grainy certainty, eggs part with a satisfying crack. Flour, dusted in, mollifies clumpy dough. Vanilla tints it warm, chocolate chips rain benevolence. The lumps of batter look humble, hunched on their tray. In the oven, they never fail at their task: to scent the air with comfort.
The wave of warm brown sugar wandered through the house, back to afternoons when the steady meter of stirring could temper tears, elicit a confidence, ease injustice. It trailed back past all the bold experiments—add oatmeal, suffer wheat germ, fleck with cinnamon—to the earliest and truest recipe, one executed in play dough: Mix. Bake. Soothe.
Thank you, that was lovely. We lost a brother in law that day, my sister lost her husband.
Lovely