Each year before Christmas I drove over to my friend Elaine’s house 20 minutes away from me in California. She baked all year long and had the best kitchen for our favorite pastime: baking cookies. Not just a few dozen. We’d whip up about 2,000 Christmas cookies of all kinds.
A tin of our goodies made a great present for almost anyone, but our annual baking tradition was mainly a way for Elaine and me to spend time together during the busy holiday season.
When I moved to Washington, D.C., I was excited about being in a new town—until Christmas rolled around. What about the holiday cookies? I thought. “I’m flying out to California a few weeks before Christmas so we can keep baking together, just like always,” I promised Elaine on the phone.
It was a no-brainer for her too. What were a few thousand miles when it came to tradition?
The one flaw in our plan hadn’t occurred to me until I was surrounded by hundreds of fresh-baked cookies. “How am I going to get all these home on the plane with me?” I asked.
We packed what we could as carefully as we could and hoped for the best. Once the flight attendants found out what I was carrying, they went out of their way to accommodate me and my fragile cargo on the plane trip home.
That was 29 years ago. Elaine and I still make our cookies together every Christmas, only now she flies to my house in D.C. In perfecting our cookie recipes over the years, we’ve perfected the recipe for a strong friendship. Not to mention an excellent cookie-packing technique!
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