My last cookie

She made me a bunch of valentine cookies last week and I’ve been sharing them a good deal. Today I came to my last one.

She loves me. She bakes for me even though she has gluten and dairy sensitivities that can make her life miserable.

It’s just her and I now. The four kids are out and married or creating meaningful lives for themselves. It hasn’t been just her and I since 1987. The first two years of our lives before that it was just us. The future stretched before us full of optimism and a wide open road.

Add four kids, thirty years, four provinces, three amazing daughters and son in laws and now four beautiful granddaughters. Then it’s just us again.

We’ve worked at our ongoing friendship through the years, so we’re still best friends. But we’re learning again what it means to be just the two of us. This time with a less open road before us. Less time, maybe less enthusiastic energy.

But more love and more wisdom. More insight, hopefully more patience. More of those good things.

So the cookie made me think of being loved. Made me reflect on some of the many challenges we’ve faced together. And the ones we will still face, sooner now than ever.

It feels like we are in pretty good shape for the next parts of our life.

That’s a lot of deep thinking over just one pink Valentines cookie. But worth thinking about the love that stands behind it.

Now for some tea.