An Extra Bag of Cookies

Occasionally for lunch I will have home-baked cookies garnished with a sandwich and a side of mandatory fruit and vegetables. This is when I bring my lunch to work. I don’t pack it – my wife does. It’s not that I require her do it – I just won’t do it. So, if she doesn’t pack me a lunch I will eat out.

When I was 16 I had a summer job driving the delivery truck at a lumber yard in Le Center. When I wasn’t out making deliveries, I would sit in the park and eat the lunch my sister Joanne had packed. After a couple days of this it dawned on me that my grandfather lived near by.

I didn’t bother to call; I walked there uninvited and unannounced. As I got close I saw him working in his garden.

The green work pants hung just above his black sensible shoes. His grey long sleeve shirt, buttoned at the cuffs and collar, would have hid his long underwear if not for the contrast of his dark skin against the white cotton. A drop of sweat clinging to the tip of his nose hinted of the July temperature. The only time he wore a hat was to church.

“Hi Grandpa, remember me?”

He studied me through his glasses as he held his hoe.

“No, no. I can’t say that I do.”

I understood. I was no longer the little boy who “was seen and not heard.” I was now 16 – almost a man, or so I thought.

“I’m Tom’s son, Jerry.”

“Sure” he said, pronouncing the word as if it had two syllables.

I told him that I was working at the lumberyard, and that if he liked I could stop for lunch sometimes. I don’t know if he had planned on eating lunch that day but he invited me in.

I sat at the table for two in the kitchen while he cooked his potatoes and fatty meat. I politely waited to open my lunch box until he sat down with his lunch. He poured each of us a glass of milk (whole I’m sure) – because as he liked to say “milk is not only a drink, it is also a food.”

Joanne always included a bag of cookies in my lunch so I offered to share them with Grandpa on that first day.

“That’s your lunch, what will you eat then?”

The next day Joanne packed a bag of cookies for Grandpa. When I handed the cookies to him I explained that Joanne had baked them for him.

“That’s very nice”, he whispered as he pushed his glasses up from underneath to rub the tears from his eyes.

We shared many hours together that summer, eating in that small kitchen. Sometimes I would stop with the truck and he would tell me to “be careful with that big thing.”

“I have seen many changes,” he said as he told me of the days when a horse was the only transportation available, then when money allowed a nice buggy was purchased.

Then tractors and cars replaced horses. Soon people flew in airplanes and man went to the moon. Grandpa said that with every change he thought that this was as far as we could go.

He looked at me and asked “What will it be like you are my age?”

I didn’t have an answer then and I won’t for another 40 years. But when I am 90 I hope I am healthy enough to entertain a grandchild in my home. I just hope they bring some cookies to share.