Peanut Butter Cookie Memories

So, it was recently my Aunty Pat’s birthday. She has been gone a few years now, but my memories of her are not.

Today, for no particular reason, I made some peanut butter cookies. (Mini side bar: I amuse myself whenever I can just bake something because I have the ingredients in my cabinets… when did I become THIS adult?) My aunt made cookies every Saturday. She also had specific shirts for each day of the week and always had to iron them on Sundays. Peanut butter cookies were her pièce de résistance. Everyone asked for them. Personally, I loved her oatmeal ones, but – I guess – we all have different tastes.

When I was a kid, I used to spend Saturday night at Aunty Pat’s. We would make alligator soup (scrambled eggs, but I wouldn’t eat it unless we called it alligator soup) for dinner, watch the Witches, play board games, and then in the morning, she would take my cousins and I to church where she taught Sunday school. She always woke up early so she could smoke and put her makeup on. She would make funny hand signs at you and say, “Tch tch tch” like she was zapping you while playing cards. She was an amazingly strong lady, and boy do I miss her.

I wasn’t thinking of her when I started making peanut butter cookies, but when I began putting the finished product on the rack to cool, I smiled thinking of her. You can ask my mom, sometimes Aunty Pat takes over my body and it’s a little scary, but I don’t mind. One time we were trying to fit a couch into a taxi cab and I clapped back at my mom in Aunty Pat’s voice, “Well can’t you just BEND IT.” If you knew her, you know the intonation that it had. We laugh about it now, but I think my mom was scared for her life.

Just goes to show how the spirits of our loved ones stay with us. Makes sense how I got to be who I am today, surrounded by all these strong women.