If you dip the cookie in the frosting, pick it up slowly, turn it over, sway it a little side to side and front to back, the frosting will level itself out. I don’t know how it knows, but it does. It’s the gift before the giving.

I think we’re all given the tools. Right from the start. Oh, sure, it takes a little turning. A little swaying. But when you know. You know. 

I used to go into my room at five years old and color my emotions. I didn’t have the words for what I was feeling, but I had 24 Crayolas that could relay the message. At six, — as Mrs. Bergstrom gave us the spelling, the words — I began to write poems.  Thus began this cookie’s life of self leveling. And the real gift is, I now have something to give.

I’m not special. We’re all given the tools. Maybe you garden. Maybe you bake. Or build. Or teach. 

Yesterday, after painting in the studio, feeling the magic of this new portrait beginning, I wanted to call my mom. Oh, how she loved magic!! And perhaps frosting even more. So I returned to the kitchen, dipped the cookies that I had made earlier that day, and turned and swayed and leveled myself in all that love, and somehow I knew she knew.