I Want to be a Cookie-Baking Grandma

I need to buy an apron

I baked cookies with my granddaughter on Friday. That is, I sliced a roll of cookie dough I bought from the grocery store onto a baking sheet. We put them in the oven and then decorated the cookies with tubes of decorator frosting.

It satisfied a longing in her and me.

Her parents hike and raft and have every minute filled with her and their activities. I get tired just listening to what they did yesterday.

My grandchild’s clothes are from Patagonia, Columbia, and North Face. My 1960s Barbies have pencil skirts and high heels. She loves playing with them. I am not advocating a return to pencil skirts and high heels. But I do love my Barbies and having them played with. It’s difficult to explain pencil skirts to a 4-year-old who wears leggings, Nikes, and sweatsuits. Heck, I try to understand why I ever wore a pencil skirt. What was the point?

I want to be the pillowy grandma

I want to be the grandma in her children’s book, the pillowy grandma with a graying bun pulling a cookie tray from the oven. I need to buy an apron.

I like being a lazy person, who reads books and watches favorite shows on television. I don’t want to do exhausting things.

I know you are never too old to bike across the country (which one acquaintance does) or hike the Appalachian Trail or many things I will never do. I feel smug when I have swum laps or walked a bit.

Her parents are careful about eating and serving only healthy foods, getting out in nature, and vegetable gardening. Her room is filled with books. It’s all good. I admire it.

At my house, I have treats with sugar in them, and we can watch cartoons on television. I have taken her to the carousel in the mall and done other things that are crassly commercial and oriented to kids. I have mentioned an amusement park not far from here, hopefully, for both of us.

My son, who lived on Doritos and pizza when he was growing up, is a great cook of whole foods and vegetarian dishes.

When his grandpa was getting remarried (my mother had died), I told him he would be getting a new grandma. His one question: “Will she bake cookies?”

I told my new stepmother about his request, and she always had a plate of cookies for us: peanut butter, chocolate chip, molasses.

I feel like a plate of cookies now is violating the sugar restrictions.

Her books include a children’s biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Kamala Harris. I like those stories, but I like the stories, too, of the family of bunnies who live under the hill and bake carrot cookies.

I suppose this is payback. Our values get incorporated, and refined, and a lifestyle too healthy for us to criticize, too socially and politically correct, is thrown back at us. It makes me just want to pour a glass of wine, find a little cheese, sit in my recliner, and turn the television on.