“Cookie.”
That’s all that had to be said the Saturday evening before I returned to Boulder after Fall Break. The scent of chocolate chip cookies in the oven wafted through my kitchen as my sister and brother-in-law sat on the couch, far past their bedtimes, waiting. My sister texted me that one simple word, mostly to make me laugh but also to remind me that she had a shift in the emergency room early the next day and she would like to have a cookie before bed. Soon, they were ready. My brother-in-law picked a cookie off the piping hot pan, ate it over the sink, and went straight to bed. My sister followed just after.
I’ve long known that acts of service are how I show affection for friends and family. That used to mean planning events, like birthday parties, making thoughtful cards, or doing chores that would take work off my mother’s plate. Most often, though, it meant cooking. I would be in the kitchen for hours on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, birthdays and random occasions — such as if my sister was upset — stirring up that person’s favorite foods. The look on their faces when they saw that there was a special treat made just for them waiting on the table always made the work worth it, even if my elementary school self clumsily used granulated sugar in the icing instead of powdered sugar. Baking was fun — I saw other people do it on TV and got to feel cool like them, I got compliments whether it tasted good or not (thanks, family), and it let me express myself in a relaxing way.
Something changed as I got older, though. I increasingly noticed myself becoming stressed as I cooked or baked, and I couldn’t place why. School was becoming more demanding, and I often found myself swamped with work, which I would procrastinate by doing other chores. Baking on the weekends only delayed getting my work done. I began to wonder if I really even enjoyed baking and cooking when every time I tried to, I had the oddest, most inexplicable anxiety. Being overly stressed can affect the amount of pleasure a person takes in activities they once enjoyed, so I rarely ever baked in high school. I still watched baking shows, would make a box mix once in a while, and cooked the occasional dinner for my family, but it just wasn’t the same. Memories from childhood begging my parents to allow me to be involved in dinner preparations seemed a world away. I don’t know if it was my adolescent angst, academic pressure or a combination of the two, but every time I was asked to cook or bake, it made me feel angry. Maybe I felt upset because I missed being able to enjoy it. (It should be noted that even though I often didn’t want to cook, I still contributed to my family by doing other chores).
Years after I stopped consistently baking, my mother would still tell people about how I loved to cook and bake. I just couldn’t seem to shed the label “baker of the family.” At every family gathering, I would be met with, “What did you bake this time?” When the answer was nothing, I felt like I was letting someone down, so baking for special occasions felt compulsory. I used to love baking because it was an escape and something I could have control over — both in what I made and when I made it. Now, I felt like it was up to other people and what they wanted from me.
The times that I have enjoyed baking in more recent years have always been when I specifically had the urge to bake and just did it because I wanted to. I’ve come to realize that baking wasn’t just something I did for other people; it was also something I did for me. Affection can only be given voluntarily, so it doesn’t quite work the same when I don’t really want to do the act of service that expresses my affection. The gratification I gained from specifically baking for others was because I wanted to give them a gift, not because they asked it of me.
Since coming to college, I’ve been much less stressed, and I’ve been missing my family. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’ve also been wanting to bake more. During Fall Break alone, I baked eight trays of cookies and a pumpkin pie. It made me so happy to see my family enjoying what I’d made. The next time I go home, I’m planning to make a tray with all the flavors my sister loves.