I married a woman to get to her mother — specifically her mother’s chocolate chip cookies. Baked with love and just a touch of crack.

The House Elf cookies are good warm, or frozen, served with coffee in the morning or red wine in the afternoon. They are a great substitute for breakfast, brunch or lunch. Good before dinner or as a late night snack. This man could live by those cookies alone.

We have been married for 36 years, and my 95-year-old house elf is still making cookies.

I don’t make them; I just eat them. If I learned how to bake, I would never leave the house.

Thanksgiving and Christmas create a conundrum. More than thirty Savages will descend on our house. Cookies must be baked and confined to our freezer for months before the holiday meals.

Those cookies in my domain are constantly calling my name.

In previous years, Savages have baked dozens of cookies only to have a handful left each holiday. I never hear the accusations, but my wife gets the earful from every part of the family when I’m out of earshot.

Lock Out

This year, she put a lock on the freezer out in the garage…

“Now I know you are not going to get these cookies…” the wife said.

I didn’t.

Through October, November and December she doled out a few cookies a week. A small fix meant to keep my addiction at bay.

Thanksgiving – we had leftover cookies. The shame, the SHAME. How can an entire family leave cookies behind.

Christmas Day, plenty of cookies for all.

The day after Christmas, the lock came off. When the wife was gone, I checked the freezer. Inside was a large rectangular tupperware full of chocolate chip cookies. The wife must have forgotten about these. In the haste to pack up leftovers for 30 family members, this one box of cookies survived.

Leftover cookies headed for the freezer.

Most of them made by the wife. A precious few in small zip lock bags from my mother-in-law (the house elf).

From Dec. 26 to Jan 7, I would slip out to the garage when the wife was gone. Sneak 2-4 cookies and nibble them in silence (in case the garage door opened and I had to scurry for cover). I washed them down with coffee. 

Why no wine? Because the wife only works part-time. She’s home by noon. No cookies in the pm for me.

After the 13 days of Christmas cookies, I finished every fucking cookie in the box. Took the tupperware out of the freezer. Did I leave it on the counter like always do? Hell no.

Tupperware FUBAR

For the past five years I have implement plan: Tupperware FUBAR.

I Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition putting the tupperware away. After she opened the cabinet and for the countless time all the leaning, mismatched tupperware spilled out on the floor, the wife “demanded” that I just leave that shit on the counter.

But this time, new plan. I carefully washed it, completely dried it, and placed it in the back of the cupboard in just the right-sized stack for that sized container. Tee-hee. I got all the cookies for me and hid the last evidence that the cookies ever existed. She will never know. Never suspect I could put tupperware away without supervision.

Mission Impossible — complete. I had fooled the wife.

Monday, Jan. 8, I came home from a bar after watching the College National Championships and the cheaters from Michigan take home another trophy.

She was sitting in the far corner of the far couch, staring intently at her iPad. She had that “look” — you know the one — the pursed lips, the tight brow.

“I didn’t have that much to drink — two beers in the second half,” I said, anticipating “the problem.” Don’t ever anticipate the problem.

Silence.

I settled into the near recliner in the near couch.

“Did you eat all the cookies that were outside?” The words came out like I had abandoned her child under a bridge. Fuck. She won’t be fooled again.

I could feel my face flush. The urge to lie was strong. Cookies can be a hell of a drug.

“Yes,” I confessed, like the grown man I spend most of my time pretending to be. ”But I only ate 2-3 a day.” I was hoping stretching out the crime would reduce my sentence.

“Bullshit. I just saw the container yesterday — you ate all those cookies at once — there had to be 20 cookies in there.”

In the tone of Bob Marley and the dead Sheriff John Brown, “I ate the cookies, but I did not eat them all at once.”

Then I started the case for my defense. I asked:

  • Did she look in the box yesterday?
  • Did she lift it to check the weight? 
  • Shake it to guess the contents?

“No… but I didn’t have to.”

I pulled out the calendar. I counted down the days. The evidence is on my side.

She will never believe me.

“Those were the cookies without nuts. They were for your brother-in-law.”

Fuck him. If he wanted cookies, he needs to come and get them. I don’t know if it’s “can’t” or “won’t”. I suspect it’s some sort of selfish preference or the Savage pecan pie would have killed him long ago.

A new cache

The wife had gone looking for the cookies, because she had an idea. She wanted to make chocolate chip cookies with Reeses Pieces. That’s right, chips of chocolate, nuts AND little bits of chocolatey peanut butter baked into a crunchy yet moist media of flour and sugar. Held together by magic and swirling four kinds of sweet and two tastes of savory.

She made the batch. Locked the fridge. Over the next four days she doled pairs. Maybe a pair in the afternoon, maybe a pair in the evening. If I was a good boy, I’d get a pair for breakfast and a pair for a midnight snack. She has behavior modification down to an art.

I salivate at the sound of the freezer door.

The Boy came over and dropped the grand baby and took the wife’s car to have the right car seat. 30 minutes later it was cookie time.

“He has my keys to the freezer,” she said like our collective worlds were coming to an end. ”They were with the car keys…” After a few minutes of quiet sobs… “it’s fine I have another key somewhere.”

I assumed she did.

She doled out a few cookies a few times a day until they were all gone. On the last day, she flashed an evil grin in my general direction.

“Have you been in the freezer yet?”

“No, it’s locked..”

“The lock was just leaning on the top of the fridge,” she said with the kind of joy reserved for only the most successful liars. ”There was no second key. It was held on by two-way tape the entire time. You could have taken it off with a butter knife.”

For four months, I believed that lock was real. For four months, I never once pulled the wire. Just when I thought I had fooled her by sneaking the last of the Christmas cookies, I learned she had been fooling me for four fucking months.

Just as my head was recovering from the shock, she hit me again…

“And now I know you can put the tupperware away too.”