Joy the Baker

I was packing up my kitchen this afternoon and I got to thinking.

I got to thinking about my box grater… which is totally weird.  

As if thinking at length about my box grater weren’t odd enough… I’m now going to shovel my box grater thoughts onto your lap.  

There’s butter.  There’s cheese.  There’s roots and veggies.  All the drama and intrigue you could want from one little box grater.  

aaaand… seriously… thanks for playing along.  I realize I’m ridiculous. 

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Sometimes life feels like layers of complications.  Like taxes and traffic and cavities and getting laid off are all piled high into one smelly sandwich that you’re supposed to eat for lunch.  Really…?  Worst sandwich ever.  Do not want. 

Complicated.  Yea.  It happens to you.  It happens to me.  

Luckily there’s… bread.  And thank the holy heavens for butter.  

Bread and butter.  Yes.  A post about bread and butter.  Perhaps the most beautiful and uncomplicated thing you can put into your face.  Don’t fight me on this one.  That would only make things more complicated.  Go and eat.  Bread and butter. 

And yes… I burnt the bottom of my bread a bit.  These things happen. 

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These are pretty, right?  Hot diggity dang, I think they’re precious.  

In the middle of frosting these cupcakes I looked down at my hands.  No big deal.  I was simply looking down at the cupcake in one hand, and frosting covered knife in the other.  I had to see what I was doing, right?  When I looked down at this particular moment, I saw… my grandmother’s hands.  There they were, the worn and wrinkled hands that had absolutely fascinated me as a child… only now spotted with powdered sugar and tinted with food coloring.  

When I was a kid I would hold my grandmother’s hand in my lap and study it like it like I might study my favorite picture book.  Somehow her hands weren’t at all different from reading an intricate a story.  

So there I was, frosting a cupcake with my grandmother’s hands.  The image was so strong that I even put down the cupcake and knife and bent my left index finger with my right hand.  It ached a little.  I don’t know why.  And just like that… those hands were gone from me.  

That was simultaneously perplexing and so comforting.  I had to share that with you…  I now only hope that I live long enough for my hands to be read like a story book.  

Now let’s talk cupcakes!

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Happy isn’t hard for me.  I might even take happy for granted.  I wake up in the morning and I’m genuinely stoked about the possibilities the day brings.  I have thoughts that make me smile when I’m sitting alone in my car.  I like rainbows and kittens, well… you get my point.

Today I shared a meal with a dear friend who isn’t so blessed in the happy department.  She’s been struggling in recent months.  She’s lost her happy.  After dinner, as we sat lingering in conversation, she told me that she couldn’t think of one thing that made her happy anymore.  I was totally floored.  I didn’t know what to say to her.  In vain I tried to name things and places that I knew she liked.  None of it worked, she just shook her head no.  It breaks my heart, but I know that I could recall fun things we’d done together until I was blue in the face.  Her happiness needs to come from the inside.

It got me thinking about happy.

What makes you happy?  What thoughts make you smile when no one else is around?  What makes you happy to get out of bed in the morning?  Share.  I want to know.

On my list of the many things things that make me happy:  Crispy Toasted Coconut Cookies.

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