As the Cookie Crumbles
Last week, when I entered the lobby of our condo building, the mail-lady (that’s not an oxymoron, it’s a fact) said, “I’m so glad to see you. I have a package for you and I don’t think it will fit in your box.” She handed me a tan padded envelope, a 9x12 type of thing that looked as if it had gone a few rounds in a raw fight competition. In the upper left corner of the package was the name Quigley with a Miami return address. I shook the envelope, squeezed it, tried to discern the shape of the contents without success. I didn’t know anyone in Miami or anywhere else with the name Quigley.
As I rode the elevator to our condo I wondered who and what my package represented. Anthrax is a powder, I thought, so that couldn’t be it. Was it a book with my name in it that I’d left at Panera’s or some other watering hole? Had I forgotten to retrieve my swim suit at someone’s pool party? It couldn’t be an article of clothing left behind at a late night tryst. At my age I don’t tryst past five p.m. and I should at least recognize the name. What was in the package and who was Quigley?
As soon as I could, I ripped open the envelope and pulled out a blue tinted Glad refrigerator storage food container with four beautiful cookies inside—two sugar cookies and two chocolate chip.
I was totally dumbfounded until I read the accompanying handwritten note.
Dear John,
Rob and I were baking cookies this weekend and we thought of you. Thank you for all you do for Seraphic Fire. Enjoy!
Patrick Q
Eureka!
Then it all made sense. Seraphic Fire is a marvelous professional chorus based in Miami. Fort Lauderdale, where I live, is on their concert circuit. I support the choir financially to a limited extent because they do exceptional work. Their performances and their recordings have given me hours of listening pleasure. The cookies were a thank from Patrick Quigley, the director, and his partner. I couldn’t stop smiling the rest of the day visualizing the young, dynamic director of Seraphic Fire baking cookies to send to the supporters of the chorus.
The following day I sent him a thank you note commenting that, since we’d really never met, there was no reason for him to be thinking of me. Nevertheless, it was the best marketing gimmick I’d encountered in many a moon. Furthermore, the cookies were gone before sunset, but the smiles and warm feelings they produced persisted.
Then I began thinking. If this unexpected and personal gift gave me such pleasure what would happen if the Seraphic Fire policy were expanded. What if cookies became the linga franca, not exclusively for supporters of the arts, but for everyone. What would happen if Mitch McConnell received a similar package of cookies with a note, Michelle and I were baking this weekend and we thought of you. What if the Obamas received a cookie package from the Boehners, the Cantors, or whomever. Could the texture of our personal and political discourse be influenced by an unexpected gift of cookies?
The older I get the more cynical I become. So I recognize immediately the answer is no.
But there still is an ember of hope in my being that endorses, What if? Would we allow the cookie monster to spread her wings and engage in unexpected acts of kindness? Or would the cynicism we’ve grown so accustomed to, no longer be recognized?
Sending chocolate chip cookies to the Obamas would, for some, evoke suspicion of racial overtones. Sugar cookies to the Boehners must infer, in the minds of others, they need sweetening. And who on our national scene can tolerate a cookie with nuts in them. Guaranteed, most members of Congress either are nuts, or are allergic to them. Probably the only legislative response to a deluge of cookies would be a law banning the Girl Scouts. Their annual cookie sales are obviously part of a terrorist activity.
That’s the reality.
As for me, a few cookies have brought a smile to my face, pleasure to my life, and my support for Seraphic Fire, ‘til death do us part. And the best thing—they were really good cookies.
John Siegfried, a former Rehoboth resident, lives in Ft. Lauderdale. Email John Siegfried