Last night I dreamt I was baking cookies again…or attempting to. It was the same as always. I am in my mother’s white and blue tiled kitchen surrounded by all the ingredients I would need to make my favorite butterscotch cookies. Except the sugar. I can never find the sugar.
I look and look and look, usually making a thorough mess of the place in the process. Yet it is never in the same place. At first I thought it was my brain telling me that my mother calls on me to save her from all the times she eagerly volunteers to make and bring cookies to events before she belatedly recalls, typically on the day of, that she can’t bake.
And every time I find the disappearing sugar, my dream ends. Once I found it under the sink. Another time it was already in the oven. Also the freezer, the pantry where it should be, inside the flour bin. And last night after I had looked everywhere I could possibly think of, guess where it turned up? In the outstretched hands of a man whose face I never got to see because I woke up before I could.
And trust me, I tried to go back to sleep, to get that dream back. I tried the rest of the night and it didn’t work. So instead I lay there remembering what I did see.
Whoever my dream hero was, he was tall and had very lean muscular arms. I know this because he was holding out the large bucket of sugar like it was nothing. They were tan too, so he spent plenty of time out in the sun. His shoulders were broad and he had been standing there waiting to help me make cookies. The perfect start to a dream relationship.
…And infinitely better than searching a kitchen for sugar all by myself.
When the phone rang and I saw my mom was calling I didn’t answer. She was sure to have some emergency that she would need me to rush over and solve. And I was busy trying to see who my subconscious was trying to tell me to date.
When she called a second time only a minute later I heaved a sigh and grabbed my phone off of my cluttered nightstand.
“Hi mom. What’s wrong?”
“Oh! Thank goodness you answered.” There was a slight pause. “Why should anything be wrong for me to call you?” My mother’s harried voice immediately went pouty.
I shook my head as I sat up in my bed and leaned back on the padded headrest. “Because you called me twice in less than a minute. At 7 in the morning on a Saturday. If this isn’t an emergency you have made me wake up early for no good reason and I’ll hang up on you. So what’s up?”
“Grace, I need you to come over immediately. Absolutely immediately. Everything is a mess and your father was called in to work so he can’t help me and everyone is expecting me to have these done and pretty and ready by noon today.”
“That seems a little last minute mom.” I pulled myself out of bed and went to get on my comfy cooking clothes. If this was something she needed my help with it would mean I’d be cooking or baking like crazy to help her be ready for some sort of event going on tonight.
“Just come save me.” She huffed.
Pulling on my shoes I glanced around for my keys. “I’m already heading out the door. I’ll be there in 20 minutes.”
“Oh good.”
As I pulled the door shut I smiled. “Mom, you never did say. What am I helping with?”
“I didn’t say?” Her mom’s voice trailed off. “Oh.”
“You only said they needed to look impressive.” I tried to prompt her.
She laughed. “Of course they do. Nancy Derrigan down the street always makes these angel sugar cookies that look divine and sparkly and perfect and pretty. I just want mine to not look like the poor neglected kid on the block.”
“So we are making cookies?”
“Oh heavens. Yes! Get down here!” I could hear her doing something that sounded suspiciously like shushing someone. “And don’t you worry. I already found you some help. You know how useless I am in the kitchen.”
“Help?” I stumbled on my way to the car. “Who?”
“You remember Nolan Strausen right?” Mom’s voice faded again. “Oh just get down here. You can reintroduce yourselves once you get here.”
“You are setting me up mom. Right? Tell me straight that you are not trying to set me up with someone using a cookie emergency as an excuse.”
She huffed loudly. “Grace Lorelai Woodman. I just thought you could use help and I found some. He can’t help it if he is gorgeously handsome and already approved by your father and I. Sorry if I don’t have a resume to send you of his cookie helping capabilities.”
“Mom. I am not doubting whether or not he can bake. I can work around that. However, I am doubtful whether this is a real emergency or if you made sure it would become an emergency so you could call me in and just so happen to have handsome manly single help nearby.”
I waited for an answer as I started the car.
“Mom?”
Pulling my phone back to look at the screen I growled a little when I saw that she had hung up on me. It definitely answered one question of mine. This was most definitely a setup.
But hey after my dream last night with my mystery stranger I had cookies, sugar, and a handsome dreamy man in my kitchen on my mind already.
“Might as well go meet this one.” I said to myself, sort of like a mini personal pep talk. “Maybe meeting a suitably parental approved man in my mom’s kitchen is the way my brain is telling me to find my one true love, though for now I’d simply settle for a devoted boyfriend.”
I pulled out of my driveway with a derisive chuckle.
“Either way. Today will be an adventure.”
