TheBanyanTree: Chocolate Cookies

[Monique Colver]

            Some days a chocolate cookie is the best I can do.

            We stopped by a new bakery this morning. Cookies and brownies
and muffins, turnovers and banana bread and all sorts of those extremely
healthy foods. I couldn't resist, nor could I decide, so I left with a bag
that included a brownie, a raspberry muffin, and a giant chocolate chocolate
cookie. (The repetition is intentional. It was the best kind of cookie, a
chocolate chocolate cookie.) This would be enough to get me through the day,
through interminable spreadsheets and numbers that wouldn't balance and
government reports that were designed with the primary intention of annoying
me. A brownie, huge and full of nuts, a raspberry muffin, and a giant
chocolate chocolate cookie. 

            I ate half the brownie before arriving at my client's office. I
sat down at my desk in my office and I put the bag with the half a brownie,
the raspberry muffin, and the chocolate cookie  on the desk, within easy
reach. This would be very important when I decided I must have something,
anything, to stave off the boredom that was sure to rear its ugly head. 

            S, the receptionist, was at work. She's been off for almost two
weeks, ever since a car accident. Traveling at 50 mph, it'd been a rough
accident, and she'd had her four year old with her at the time. The child
was okay, S a bit banged up, the car totaled. And she was back at work,
though far from feeling particularly mobile or perky. I offered my sympathy
and went back to my office. She looked uncomfortable, as well she would be
with her back still injured.

            A bit later S IM'd me. IM is a very important feature in my job,
since some of us are thousands of miles away from others of us, but in this
case S was barely fifty feet away. Far enough to make use of IM though. And
this was her message:

            "Oh, and I'm pregnant."

            Even typed, the words were noticeably absent of enthusiasm. Even
without sound or inflection or a glimpse of the look on her face. 

            S is 22. She's single and has a 4 year old. She's joined a new
church, and talks of getting married someday and having many more children.
But this? Now? 

            I asked how she felt about that. I don't know her well, I'm
rarely in the office since I do most of my work, especially these days,
remotely, though we often commiserate over IM, especially when she's bored
or frustrated. I've seen her stretch marks from her first child - she's open
and funny and cute, and she is, most of all, young. And this is her first
"real" job. 

            And she tells me, or more precisely, she types me, that she
doesn't want another child now. I don't ask how she managed to miss the
birth control concept. I don't ask her what she could have possibly been
thinking. I'm sure she can get enough of that from her parents. I do tell
her I can understand that this must be a difficult thing. 

            She'd like to find someone who can take the baby and bring it up
properly, or she'd like to not have it at all. It is not a good time. She
works for ten dollars an hour and has a four year old. I know, from past
conversations, that she was hoping to get married next year, to someone from
her church. They'd talked about it. 

            I don't know what to say. What does one say? 

            I asked her if a chocolate cookie would help. I'm pretty sure
that when it comes down to it, a chocolate cookie, even a chocolate
chocolate cookie, is not going to be much use, but she said she'd be right
there, and then there she was, standing next to my desk.

            I pulled the giant chocolate chocolate cookie out of the bag and
gave it to her, and she broke it in half, and she said, "I think I'm going
to cry." The chocolate cookie was the most marvelous thing that had happened
to her all day, and while it wouldn't be enough, once she'd finished it, to
get her through the next phase, whatever that might be, for that one moment
in time it was enough. That, and being able to say what was on her mind
without being told the obvious: she should be careful, she should think, she
shouldn't have let this happen. These things she already knows, and it's not
my place to point them out. I'm sure there are enough who will do that for
her.

            We sent her home after that. She was in pain, from the accident,
and she'd put in enough hours for her first day back. 

            There are never enough chocolate cookies, but we should at least
enjoy the ones we can get, while we can get them.