She had the biggest sweet tooth out of anyone I know. When my brothers and I sold boxes of chocolates for fundraisers, we didn’t even have to leave the house. Grandma would buy the chocolates, one or two boxes at a time, until they were all gone.
I wasn’t Grandma’s favorite grandchild, but I was appreciated when I would bake, which I did quite often when we lived in the same house in Eureka. Every time I started baking I would wonder, How long until Grandma comes into the kitchen? It was usually no longer than thirty minutes.
“What are you making, Abby?”
“Oh, I love chocolate…”
“Am I allowed to have one?”
Many times Grandma would be too full to eat more than a few bites of her dinner, but would leave the kitchen with two or three cookies.
As everyone knows, the best time for baking or anyone who loves sweets is the holiday season. Every year when I came home from college for Christmas Break I would spend the entire week leading up to Christmas baking.
Grandma loved this. She would circle around the island in the kitchen a few times, eying the plates and plates full of cookies and other baked goods. Last Christmas was perhaps the greatest of all for Grandma. My mom had already made three different kinds of cookies, and I made four more different kinds as well as little dog biscuits for Reese and Tandy.
So eight huge plates of cookies—molasses, mint chocolate chip, sugar, and more—filled the kitchen when Grandma made her way out from her room. I was still busy baking as she circled around, not even saying hi to my dad and little brother. Cookies were the important thing right now.
After a few minutes she asked, “What are these ones here?”, pointing to the dog biscuits.
“Oh, don’t eat those ones, grandma. Those are dog biscuits,” I told her, although I knew my brother and dad would have preferred that I didn’t tell her.
“Oh, you’re kidding!” she said.
“No, grandma. I’m not kidding. They are dog biscuits,” I said as she picked one up.
And lifted it toward her mouth.
My dad, my brother, and I all looked at each other… Is she going to do it?!
Grandma took a bite.
Carl, Dad, and I immediately ran outside because we couldn’t control our laughter.
“I told her they were dog biscuits! Twice!”
Out of all the plates of amazing cookies, Grandma had chosen a rock-hard little dog treat.
Later that day Carl, who was Grandma’s favorite even though he loved to taunt her, went into her room and asked how the cookie was.
“Oh, it was okay,” she replied. “But it was a little bit dry.”
My grandma was a pretty picky eater. She wasn’t afraid to say that my dad’s pizza wasn’t as good as Pizza Hut or that my mom’s salmon made her gag. But after the dog biscuit incident, every time my grandma complained about their cooking, my dad had to resist the urge to say, “Well, what do you know? You eat dog food.”
 |
| "Grandma, why are you eating my cookies?" |
