COOKIE BAKER VS. LAWYER: WHO WIELDS POWER?

I want to take a national poll, but I don't know how to go about it. Hillary Clinton would know, but I would hesitate to ask her because my poll would concern her. My question would be: How many votes did Hillary lose or gain for her husband, Bill, when she said, in response to some campaign question about her involvement as a lawyer in a firm that was funneled a case by the Arkansas Governor, "Well, I guess I could have stayed home and made cookies..." That is, I suppose, instead of becoming a lawyer?

I could just see the hairs raising on millions of American homemakers as they sat down to watch a little TV while their cookies were baking and saw a broadcast or re-broadcast of this event. Talk about being politically incorrect, that ought to be near the top. A really smart lawyer, as I hear she is, wouldn't have said that in a tense campaign year. Tense might be the forgiving word here. We all say things in tense moments that we later wish we hadn't.

In silent defiance, before my softer criticism set in, I went to my cabinets, almost slammed down the cinnamon and nutmeg. Especially the nutmeg. Nearly everything to be baked or cooked is enhanced by a grain or two of nutmeg.

The lid to my flour canister was slipped off with such force, it rolled off the counter top and all the way to the back door. I dropped sugar on the floor and left butter to soften in the Microwave too long.

Soon I realized I was defeating my purpose that of re-experiencing the joy and calming effect of leisurely making cookies in my own familiar, cozy kitchen, and perhaps, later, telling others about such effects who find the quarreling world too much with them.

So I retrieved the flour can lid, swept up the sugar and started over. The little goldfinch at the feeder outside my window came to feed and perhaps to watch me as I watched them. Their little silvery conversations reached my ears and I began to respond with a little hum of "Springtime, Sweet Springtime," hoping they could find some iota of pleasing sound or at least contentment in my hum.

The butter re-hardened to a suitable stage to mix with brown sugar and egg. I watched the centrifugal force of the Sunbeam mixer at work the heavier things, lumps of sugar and hunks of butter, being thrown to the outside of the bowl, while that near the mixers grew finer and fluffier. The cookie maker knows that she/he has to keep scraping the coarser elements back into the mixer so that everything lightens up. I wondered of Hillary knew this elementary thing about dough and other things.

It takes great brain power to make cookies? No. Anyone who can read directions can do it. Is the cookie baker brainless? No!

The cookie baker is to be found in the most important unit of the whole world, the family. She manages this establishment that is crumbling and on the edge of disastrous redefinition. She is plaintive and defendant, jury and judge for complicated cases every day. She is constantly working on the centrifugal principle bringing in the heavier, sterner, coarser stuff of her domain to mix and mold until it is suitable to present to the world.

The cookie baker, if she doesn't abdicate her domain, cave in under put downs, tolerate all manner of condescension, is the one who makes and molds teachers, doctors, lawyers, poets, financiers, etc. She is the All Purpose, Fits Every Size American.

So, you might say, if the family is crumbling, how come? Isn't she doing her job?

She is being slowly nibbled at all around the edges by such querulous statements as, why does she stay home? Why doesn't she get a job? She's more interested in soap operas than knowing where her children are. She is being made to feel guilty. She is beginning to wonder if her modus operandi of one-on-one-two-three (children) basis is as important as it is to get out and try to tend to the masses.

Stay put, cookie bakers, if you can. Yours is the springboard for society. Yours is the scraper-in-er of the coarser elements to make more palatable members of society. Yours is the domain where great and wonderful thoughts are spawned. Yours is the place to inhale the aroma of baking cookies to share with loved ones and, while sharing, to talk about ways to make the family stronger and wonder, tolerantly, albeit querulously, at those who don't think you wield a powerful influence and in tense moments flippantly say so.

Connecticut, the "Nutmeg State" has a lot of cookie bakers, I bet.

REJOICE!