Like some of you, I am thinking more and more about my mom as Mother’s Day gets closer and closer.

Lord willing, I will be picking her up on Saturday and taking her out to eat. It will be just the two of us.

When you’re one of ten kids, having her all to myself is precious.

I devour our conversations when it’s just us two. They’re more personal and we’re able to talk about the real grittiness of life that sometimes knocks on our doors.

Before I got out of bed this morning, I was thinking about my mom and some of the memories I have of her when I was still living at home.

One of those memories took place when I was in the 6th grade at Lawrence Elementary in Tucson, Arizona.

My teacher’s name was Mr. Monk. He was pale in color with blondish hair that he kept short and parted to the side. Can men have rosy cheeks? I think he had them.

He told our class that he was from Massachusetts and how Massachusetts sometimes gets pronounced MassaTUsetts which still confuses me to this day.

In Mr. Monk’s class, we had to do book reports. It could be about any book, and we had to go in front of the class to share our findings.

I had no problem doing these. I loved to read, I loved getting creative with my presentations and having your class’s attention all in one whack was a powerful feeling for a 6th grader.

For one of my book reports, I decided on a book about how to make gingerbread cookies.

I thought it would be neat after I gave this book report to the class, to give them each a cookie from the recipe.

I had to enlist my mom for help because I didn’t know how to cook or bake. I didn’t even know how to turn on an oven.

We got all the ingredients we needed.

Then I started following the recipe with mom close at hand, watching my every move there in the small kitchen on Tetakusim Road.

The gingerbread dough was thick and gritty, and I liked the feel of it.

Mom helped me roll it out on the kitchen table and I chose the star shaped cookie cutter from her little collection.

I enjoyed pressing the star shaped cookie cutter into the sturdy gingerbread dough.

Then I removed all the excess dough and my unbaked stars and I, smiled at each other.

We put them on baking sheets and mom put them in the oven.

Once done, we did a taste test, and it was delicious!

After they cooled off, I carefully put them in one of my mom’s light green Tupperware bowls for class the next day.

The next day, I completely bored my class reading to them verbatim from my book about how to make gingerbread cookies.

When I was finished with my reading, I stood up, grabbed the light green Tupperware bowl and tore the lid off.

The class started waking up.

Ladies and Gentlemen! I now present to you, star shaped gingerbread cookies!

I went row by row and plopped a cookie on each of their dirty desktops.

Without hesitation, each kid bit into the soft, thick gingerbread star.

And that was a wrap.

To this day, I have yet to taste gingerbread cookies as delicious as the ones my mom helped me with for this book report during my 6th grade year.

Perhaps it’s because, mom’s hand was in the mix.

~missy salcido wead