Horse search turns up lightened spirit, cookies

Many years ago on a grey, driz­zly early Decem­ber day, I drove some­where in Knox County to buy a horse. Think­ing a horse might lift my dreary spir­its, I answered an ad, knocked on the door of a small frame house in the midst of a decid­edly unkempt farm­stead, one I had con­cluded could not house a horse I would want!

A plump middle-aged woman answered, invit­ing me in. She apol­o­gized for the kitchen’s dis­ar­ray and what a pas­tiche of dis­or­der it was! The hurly-burly of bak­ing con­sisted of aban­doned egg shells fallen on the floor, dirty pots and pans piled in the sink and a myr­iad of cookie sheets lin­ing what was left of a counter. An oven door stood open to both take out and put in trays of cookies.

Smells of burnt sugar, lemon zest, gin­ger, vanilla hung in the room. The mas­sive col­lec­tion of color and design con­trasted with the out­side same­ness and turned me upside down. Sud­denly I was there not to buy a horse in hopes of change, but rather, to remain in the cen­ter of a grand old tra­di­tion of bak­ing Christ­mas cookies.

Inside that kitchen filled with shape, color, motion, against a sod­den and heavy-leaden out­side world lit up both sides. Her intense point of pur­pose was to cre­ate abun­dance, beauty, sati­a­tion through her cook­ies to share with that unhappy world on the other side of the fogged win­dow. Her kitchen glowed with sweet activ­ity meant to feed oth­ers more than a quick bite; she moved from project to project obliv­i­ous of her own pres­ence in all this activ­ity. She was included, not excluded from Christ­mas, as were all those whose lives she would later change with her gifts stacked on a paper plate deliv­ered to a neighbor’s back door or to a friend in the hos­pi­tal or to a peo­ple gath­ered on Christ­mas Eve.

I left not with a horse but a pile of cook­ies and a light­ened spirit. While a horse might have been a dis­trac­tion, this lady’s Christ­mas kitchen was meant to endure.

Sylvia Zim­mer­man is the owner of Ful­ton Creek Jer­sey Cheese in Rich­wood. She holds two grad­u­ate degrees and, when not work­ing on her farm or pur­su­ing her inter­est in sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, writes her own blog.

Posted by Sylvia Zimmerman on Dec 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.