Today I deliver cookies to students and then professors and staff in the English department. You know I’m not crafty or excellent with icing. You know the cookies had icing dripping in hardened form down their sides with sprinkles haphazardly applied. You also can surely imagine the packaging: gold cellophane tied with twine.
Only for a moment did I consider the parallel universe in which the ideal Heather makes perfect cookies.
I stayed in reality. I dropped off the cookies and loved people as I know how, in the real ways I can. People smiled. Some exclaimed with joy. Others gobbled the cookies before I could turn to leave their offices.
I spread wishes and warmth and me.
It was ideal after all.