Latent Lessons

This weekend a friend of mine from my previous assignment came for a visit. Tonight we decided to make some double-chocolate cookies. This may sound like a somewhat typical activity to you, but here it’s quite the event. For one thing people here rarely make their own desserts. For another, EVERYTHING here is made from scratch—no slicing and baking cookies from a “log” or spooning out dough from a tub here folks!

So as I finished and started to wash up, I took the beaters out of the mixer and brought one over to my friend. “Here,” I said, “I need to teach you a very important family tradition.” Then I showed him how to go about licking a beater to get the maximum amount of cookie dough in your mouth and the minimum amount on your face and in your hair, etc.

As all this took place, I couldn’t help but smile and think of my Mom. (Now as many of you know, I have AMAZING parents and they have both taught me a lot—but it’s funny how many of those lessons were somewhat latent and I’m only now beginning to understand the depths of their wisdom.)

My Mom and I have made a lot of desserts together over the years, so I have had lots of practice licking beaters. However, it wasn’t until I was halfway around the world making cookies for someone else that I really understood what Mom had been teaching me.

You see, typically my family didn’t make desserts just because. We made them for special occasions: family get-togethers, birthdays, pot-lucks, etc. But tonight standing in a kitchen thousands of miles away from my Mom, I realized that it never mattered whether the desserts were for someone else or for us to share with others, Mom never scraped all the dough off the beaters. She wasn’t being lazy, wasting food, or lacking in efficiency, she was showing me that no matter how important the guests or how special the occasion, I was even more important and more special still.

So I thought about how easy it is for me to get caught up in trying to do everything perfectly—to work hard, manage my time well, and use all my resources as efficiently as possible. All of those are certainly good things, but what about the people closest to me? Would I have left extra dough or batter on the beaters for them, or am I so concerned with keeping everything tidy and efficient that there is no room for little kids with chocolate on their nose and in their hair and a giant smile of love and appreciation on their face? Can efficiency really be more important than that?

Mom understood that the goal wasn’t the perfect presentation or the maximum yield of cookies: she was maximizing joy. That’s why she was making the desserts to begin with—so that people could enjoy them. For her, 3 messy little boys hyped up on sugar didn’t detract from the future joy, it merely helped her enjoy it in the present too.

I sure hope one day I’m as wise as my Mom!

Oh and P.S., the cookies turned out great!