In pursuit of my favorite cookie, the truth must be told.

Five years ago, I was living in New York. I had a birthday a month and change after September 11th. It was then that I got calls from relatives who otherwise don't know my phone number, cards, and emails. It was because I was having a "tough time" and needed encouragement. And I received this INSANE cookie jar filled with (mind you really good) chocolate cookies. In pursuit of my favorite cookie, this story needs telling.

The package came a couple of days before my birthday. It was gigantic and cumbersome and I felt oh-so-cool having to sign for it at the dorm (the dorm lovingly labeled the G-spot. I have the stickers to prove it.). Naturally, I had a small crowd opening the package due to its size and not much else going on at the time. It's amazing how my popularity is based on the boredom of others. I unwrapped enough to see the 1-800 Flowers brochure. This was it. This was my dozen roses from a secret admirer, I just knew it. I unwrapped more and I saw red and white stripes, and my heart sank. I knew then that not only was it not from a secret crush, it was from my mother. And my mother forgot that I wasn't six.

Standing in the crowd, I realized that I wasn't alone: none of us understood it. We knew it was a cookie jar, but anyone in the world knew that a nineteen year old college student doesn't want Cat in the Hat paraphenalia. It proved to be the most embarrasing gift on the eastern seabord that fall. It stood about 2 feet tall, and it just did not have a place in my dorm. I tried on my desk, but there were too many books. Then I tried the dresser, but it got in the way of the tv. It was either the windowsill or in the closet. It was eat or be eaten by guilt.

I was torn between two worlds that year. One world was a conceptual one inside that Cat in the Hat cookie jar, containing the love of a mother, the knowledge that she was just trying to make my world better, and the concept of those delicious chewy chocolate cookies covered in powdered sugar. The other was real. It was outside that cookie jar. It was loveless and heartless and filled with guilt. It was a collective New York shopping for size 0. It was family members who claim they love me enough to call on my birthday, but not any other day. It was a sister who swore she believed in me but didn't take the time to find out in what she was believing. It was a building that was still burning and a horizon changed forever.

Those cookies may very well have been the best cookies I ever had in my life, but they went for the most part uneaten. I spent years feeling guilty about not finishing those cookies. Because in not finishing those cookies, I was also not loving my mother enough; my blessings just weren't being counted. In not eating those cookies, I was acknoweding the change in horizon that had happened inside of me. No longer could someone fix my problems with sweets and a smile and a simple gesture. This was real and it hurt.

I threw out those cookies one short day before Thanksgiving. I felt sick. So sick and so guilty that I ended putting that cookie jar on the windowsill, and hoping that the plants would hide it just enough. When I looked at the window that year, if I squinted my eyes enough, the horizon still looked the same.