Grandma B’s Cookies

I was well into my thirties the first time I expressed a preference. I think it was, “Ranch, please.” 

Even then, I halfway expected someone at the table to interrupt and tell me I preferred creamy Italian. I can honestly say, without rancor, that I don’t remember an instance in my childhood when someone other than Santa Claus asked me what I wanted. Of course that’s a gross exaggeration, but bear with me.

As a child, my preferences were simply not relevant to my parents or to any other authority figure I grew up around. My mother was German, and I say that the way I’d say, “This Szechuan hot pot is spicy.” She was a highly functional mother, not a fawning one. She had a job to do and it did not involve my “druthers.” But that was OK with me. Really. It was what it was. I didn’t consciously feel offended about it until much later, when that same dynamic played out with her grandchildren:

It was a balmy summer afternoon at my parents’ home in southern California. The four kids were disagreeing and peeing in the pool when Grandma appeared at the door and asked, “Who wants a cookie?” Whereupon, they all responded in unison, “What kind?”

Now keep in mind, as post-“Because I said so” children who grew up during California’s self-esteem pandemic, they had every reason to believe this was a reasonable question. But their grandmother, displaying all the righteous indignation characteristic of her teutonic, Catholic, depression era upbringing, responded, “They’re shit cookies! Do you want one or not?”

Wise Ask: Have you raised your kids the way you were raised or the way you were not raised?