Mom's Chocolate Chip Cookies

I'm baking cookies this morning, from my mom's recipe.  Chocolate chip.

We make them differently, she and I, but we use the same recipe.  She uses Crisco and margarine, I use all butter.  I add oats, she doesn't.  I freeze half of them to save for later; she freezes them all because Dad likes them that way.  We both make them soft and chewy.  And both of ours are gobbled up by those we love, almost as soon as they leave the oven.

I don't have a close relationship with my mother - never have.  Neither of our faults exclusively, just an amalgam of missed moments.  And most days, in this decade, that's just the ways things are, neither good nor bad.  But this morning, as I bake cookies from her recipe, I let my mind wander a little into the world of what ifs:

What if we had been close?  What if we were still?

Would I have made different choices in high school?  Would I have stayed closer to home, when the time came to leave for college?  Or perhaps returned "home" afterward?  Would she have been my confidant?  Would she be the one that I call now, when I need advice, or simply when I'm exhausted from being up all night *again* with the baby?  Would our conversations be silly and serious, all wrapped into an effortless ease?  Would she have moved closer, so she could hang out with her grandchildren more often?  Would she babysit so that we could have that long overdue date?  Would I know more of her story, her thoughts, her longings?

Would I call her right now, to tell her that I was thinking of her, and making her cookies?

What ifs can be a real B sometimes.

And yet.

And yet, if we hadn't had the relationship that we did, I don't know if I would have gone to the same college, so many hours away from home.  If I hadn't done that, I don't know if I would have actually grown and come into a faith that was real and authentically wrestled with, thought through and my own.   Maybe I wouldn't have dated some of the same boys - or maybe I would have been less guarded with others - but if I hadn't had those relationships, those experiences, I'm not sure that I would have had the perspective that I did, when my husband finally rolled into the picture.  I certainly wouldn't have had the same wide range of beloved friends and really sweet memories that I did, from my "throwing caution to the wind" and "making my own way" spell.

If we hadn't had the relationship that we do, man, so much of my own journey, through the mountaintop panoramas and darkest of valleys - of work, family, identity, home, adventures, reconciliation, healing, wrestling - so much of it might have looked different.  Then again, maybe not.  Who knows.  Does the butterfly's fragile wing affect everything, or nothing at all?

But what I do know as true is - if we hadn't had the relationship that we did, I would not have understood the fierce beauty that is fighting for something that sometimes you'd rather be fighting against.  I wouldn't know, so intimately, the sweetness of each baby step towards a good relationship.  And my picture of healthy conflict and holy reconciliation would be shallower and less dear to me.

If our relationship - with all its ups and downs, and conflict and resolution - had been different, I might be a very different person.  In good ways, maybe.  A close relationship with parents is certainly to be desired.  But in some bad ways too.  Do not mistake that within every refining fire, dross is burned away, leaving behind gold that might otherwise not have been revealed.  I am who I am as a result of the life that I have lived.  And while I do not wish to traverse them again, I am grateful for all the mountaintops and valleys that have brought me to where I am presently.

So this afternoon, I'll call my mom.  Tell her I made her cookies this morning, and that it made me think of her.  We'll talk about baking, the weather, and my kids, and we'll take tentative baby steps into deeper waters.  Because this journey is not over until it's over.  And we're making our own way, one baby step at a time, and for that I'm grateful.

And tonight, I'll hug my baby girl and tell her how much I love her - and how deeply I pray that she and I will always share this sweet bond that we have now.  Man, I want that, and will give my all to make it so.

But I'll remind her, and remind myself again, that even if we don't for a season - there is still gold yet to be revealed.