Those Cookies We Like!

Remember those cookies we liked so much, little sweetheart? We used to get a package of them at Safeway, over by the Marina, and then drive over to a lookout point, maybe near Ocean Beach and watch the surf and eat the cookies in the front seat of your car. 

They're almost like little pieces of white layer cake-  soft and chewy, and the frosting is always decorative for whatever holiday is near. Sometimes we'd get them in pink and red for Valentines Day or in green with shamrocks for St Paddy's. 

Well, I've got some and am having one (or two) for lunch dessert with my coffee right now and thinking of you! D'agostino's is a little NYC grocery chain and they do a few things like Safeway, incredibly. They have that charming little "thunderstorm" effect in the produce section that periodically waters the vegetables adding a little SFX of a thunderclap (in SF, Safeway also had a little flashing white light approximating lightning, too). And they have these cookies on some holidays. These ones are for Halloween, of course and have orange frosting with yellow and white sprinkles. Saving one for you! 

With all my love...

Valentines

It’s Valentines Day, little sweetheart! 

Remember those cookies we liked at Safeway, so much? Kind of almost like little pieces of cake, soft and vanilla and thick with icing for all different sorts of holidays - green shamrocks for Paddy’s Day, Red White and Blue for July 4th, Pink and white hearts for today? We’d get a box of a dozen and try not eat them all in your car as we sat by the bay watching the waves come in, sometimes spotting a dolphin or two! Well, they had a few boxes at D’ags this weekend, so I bought a dozen (a dozen cookies, not a dozen boxes!) just for the occasion. 

Thinking of you, as always. Oh, also... I sent flowers to you and your mom, which I believe have arrived safely. 

With all my love forever. 

 

Feb 14th

It’s Valentines Day, little sweetheart! I made those sugar cookies that you like using the heart shaped cookie cutters and frosted with pink icing. Sometimes I take a few over to the rectory at Sacred Heart but it still feels too close to the pandemic to be wandering over with homemade treats, however well intended. I did send flowers for both you and your mom and I think they got there safely. I’m keeping an eye out online for delivery confirmation! 

All this really just to say, I’m thinking of you, my love, on this day and every day. 

With all my love forever.

Sweets for the Sweet

Little sweetheart, that local grocery store - Dagostino's -  we like so much here in NYC, you may remember, struck such a chord with us, in no small measure, because it reminded us of Safeway and especially the Safeway in San Francisco's Marina District where we used to go. 

One of the things we liked were those soft sugar cookies that were frosted like little pieces of cake. They did special ones for all the holidays - green shamrocks for Paddy's Day, red white and blue ones for July 4th, orange and black ones for Halloween - as well as the regular ones throughout the year. More than once you and I took a whole package down to Ocean Beach and ate them as we watched a school of dolphins playing in the waves. 

For years, Dag's had these too, but a year or two ago they stopped carrying them. Happily, today I discovered they are back! These seem to be Valentines themed. I'll have one or two tonight thinking of you, as always! 

With all my love.

Christmas Eve

It’s Christmas Eve, little sweetheart, and I’m on my own, just quietly spending the evening watching on a movie and having a few of those cookies I bake each year. Sure do miss you tonight. We’ll be heading out to see your folks (Sylvia arrives on Friday) first week of January and I’m very much looking forward.

Tonight, I’m just keeping quiet and lighting a nice fragrant candle. It’s a pine and balsam one. I’ve never watched the hours long midnight mass from Rome that they broadcast on Christmas Eve, so I think I’ll do that in a few hours.

Thinking of you, as ever, and asking that you be near me tonight and in the days ahead. With all my love…

As In Baking, As in Life...

I was making a second batch of Christmas cookies last night, little sweetheart. I wanted to do some work but it was so noisy on the street outside, I decided to bake instead.

I had on my playlist of Christmas favorites - you’ve heard a few of them - which included two 30 minute radio documentaries I recorded off the air when the BBC broadcast them years ago. One about the annual Advent service “Darkness to Light” at Salisbury Cathedral and the other interviewing former boy choristers and people involved with the famous 9 Lessons and Carols service at Cambridge.

Between the two of them is a song I heard a few years ago released by the Sheffield band, The Crookes - “You Bring the Snow”. It’s an incredibly bittersweet song longing for “just one more Christmas like when we were young”.

The first time I heard it, and I think probably every time after, it has made me ache for you… and it did tonight. Oven mitt in hand, cutting the little stars and angels and bells, the smell of ginger and molasses and longing for you, my heart so heavy, I just cried and cried and cried. Weeping, aching for you. And all the while shuffling along between the counter and the oven going on with my task.

Very much like how I keep going through my life. Heartbroken to be separated from you but with faith that you are safely in God’s care, that I will be with you again, soon and forever, and that I simply must carry on doing all the things I’m meant and you very much want me to complete.

Yes, little sweetheart, I will remember and honor and call to you always. Always. With all my heart, with all my love. Forever.

The Comfort of Ritual

I’ve been reading, little sweetheart, and looking at the illustrations of an artist and author who lost his wife to cancer just a little over a year ago. He has two little girls to raise in her absence and while their grief is palpable and ever-present, there is also a kind of faith and eternal love equally forefront in all his work, as he tells his story day to day.

One recent post that caught my eye was how he had come to enjoy cooking and how it provided a great feeling of comfort. His experience is a bit different than ours - his wife was the cook for many years and it’s only now that he’s taken up the mantel - but the feeling of comfort is the same.

One of my favorite things to do ever was to cook for you. One time when a friend was visiting you here and the two of you were going to go out for a drink for a couple of hours to catch up before returning home, I was just taking dessert out of the oven and putting dinner in. She just looked at you and said “You get to come home to this? You’re so lucky!”.

I think she was wrong, though - I’m the lucky one, little sweetheart. And cooking now, be it for Sylvia or for your parents when I visit them or even just most nights when I’m here on my own, reminds me so much of you, and cooking for you and sitting down with you and having dinner together.

So many of our rituals remain and they comfort me, little sweetheart, in knowing that you are nearer than I can imagine. With all my love forever. 

The Red Curlers

I’m remembering today, little sweetheart, lots of things from your very first visit here to New York, shortly after we became a pair. Indeed, I’m endeavoring to write down all that I can remember. And one of the things that I hadn’t thought about in a while was that once here, you had decided you needed to have a set of curlers on hand.

You didn’t often curl your long red hair but sometimes you liked to and you’d just finished doing a play in which you had, so I think it was still on your mind. We went over to the little store across 9th Avenue that’s sort of mostly hardware but also has homeware and stationary supplies and really just a little of everything. We got you a set of curlers - they’re red. I seem to remember there was something wrong with the first set or maybe you just changed your mind but we brought them back and exchanged them for a second set.

They’re still here, of course. The red table and an entire corner of that room was and is your province. I would always set all your things out for you just before your arrival and make sure to stock up on treats you like - mint tea, vanilla cameo sandwich cookies, your favorite vintage diet sodas - and arrange a dozen roses in a vase at your place there.

I keep all of these things for you to this day, my little sweetheart, along with an always burning tea light candle in a little glass holder before one of your many pictures.

This will always be your home. As you, yourself, are mine. With all my love forever.  

Together

Little sweetheart, I forgot about a picture I took last month that made me think of you...

I was at D’Agostino’s. They have a few things in common with Safeway (and we don't have Safeway's on the east coast...). I didn’t discover it until after I’d been in SF with you. The Safeway at The Marina had a delightful little SFX in the produce aisle that would make the sound of thunder when the sprinklers went on to wet the vegetables there. D’Ags has the same thing here. They also sometimes have something on the other side of the aisle opposite the produce that you and I used to love - frosted sugar cookies.

Remember? They’re really soft and cake-like and they usually put them out with a holiday theme - at St Patrick’s Day, they’ll be in shamrock shapes with green icing; on July 4th, they’ll be red, white and blue… They had some last month with a Christmas theme.

I took a picture because it reminded me of how you and I used to get a package of them, usually right there at the Marina Safeway, but sometimes at the one a bit closer to your house, and then drive down to the beach and watch the waves together. We’d eat the cookies and watch the tide come in. Once, I remember, we saw several dolphins. One and then another and another. We cried out excitedly. Remember? And we’d try not to eat all the cookies. but we’d have most of them.

Little sweetheart, I miss a thousand million things about my life with you. The life I was meant to have but was torn from me. I suppose there are many things I don’t and can’t yet know. Maybe there is a much better life with you just ahead once I get through this mortal one, one that I will find when I pass through the veil and see you finally take my hand and bring me along again to your side but this time forever.

I pray for that every morning and every night and often throughout the day. Take me to you the moment heaven will allow, won’t you, my love? I’ll bring those cookies we like…