I see the kitchen on Marquette Dr. in Warwick. It is a Friday afternoon in late September. I am in 7th grade.
I am home earlier than my brother and sister because I go to a different school now that I am in 7th grade. They are not going to be home for another hour so I have some time to myself.
The window in the kitchen is open to the breeze flowing through the neighborhood. The Friday afternoon is cloudless and the sun is angling through the trees in our backyard. I can see the difference in the angle of the sun a month into the school year. It is lower. It is not as strong. A month ago I was swimming in Sand Pond and now I am closing my window against the cold at night.
Tomorrow is Saturday. I have the whole weekend to myself. I have a soccer game in the morning and then I am going to eat chocolate chip cookies and watch football games on TV. Maybe I will also ride my bike.
My Mom is not home at the moment but she made a pile of chocolate chip cookies. They are in the round Tupperware bin with the top that has the two handles on the side. The handles don’t look like they should fit that top. They look like they should fit on an industrial garbage can.
These are the handles that I grab as I remove the top to get to the treasure inside. My Mom uses my great-grandmother’s recipe for the cookies, and I have never tasted cookies so good. They are crispy on the outside and if I get them early enough they are chewy on the inside.
The cookies are just the way that I want my life to be. Crispy on the outside to protect me from the terrors of age 12 (homework, hard classes, mean teachers, bullies) and warm on the inside (football games on TV, riding bikes, playing wiffle ball).
I am warm when I come into the house on this late September day because of the love inside the walls. Tonight, we are going to get a pizza and all sit together in the family room watching a TV show. After the pizza I may have another chocolate chip cookie or two…
