I’m celebrating the chocolate chip cookie. My
favorite is when the chips are crunchy sweet, and the dough all around, soft, salty.
But I’m not focused on the yum factor. Instead, I’m cheering on the chocolate
chip cookie because it is a solution to a problem that I struggled with in
writing SHATTERED.
In my first draft, I went on and on telling
about how my protagonist Cassie’s family had been slowly unraveling around her. While working on
it at Vermont College
While I started
in a new place, it was still important to convey
to the reader how things had gone downhill. In looking backward, the reader has a chance to gain an understanding of why present events
The chocolate chip cookie became my champion. Cassie’s memory of coming home from elementary
school to the smell of cookies that her mother had just baked shows us what she
has lost.
When Cassie and her mother begin to re-connect, it’s
just prior to Thanksgiving. Her mother suggests they do some holiday baking
together. Cassie says, “We haven’t made chocolate chip cookies since forever.” Mixed
in with her words, we hear her longing, her need to do something with her mom,
just like they used to do together. But her mom misses the communication,
replying that she was thinking of baking pumpkin pies. Cassie becomes more
direct. “But I miss your cookies, Mom;” and she thinks to herself, “And you being around.” Her mom hears
her this time, suggesting that they bake a pie for Cassie to take to her best
friend’s house at Thanksgiving, so her daughter will be a proper guest; and they
can also bake cookies just for the two of them. Cassie pushes further, telling
her mom that her best friend will “kill her” if she doesn’t bring her some
cookies, too. In her persistence, we see that Cassie not only needs to do
something that feels normal—baking chocolate chip cookies with her mom—but
also, she wishes to make the healing real. If she takes her favorite cookies to
her best friend, her friend becomes a witness to the normalcy, the healing that
is occurring for Cassie.
I decided not to show the scene of Cassie baking with
her mother. Instead, Cassie comes home from school the day after they baked to be
surprised by finding her mom home early from work, in the kitchen. It startles Cassie.
Her mom is changing. She is coming back
home, being around more, being more available. Cassie wonders if she’s in the
wrong house or if she’s “morphed backward in time to when she was five years old.”
The chocolate chip cookie is a
messenger. It’s a messenger of Cassie’s wishes—to be connected to her mom, her
family; a message of hope—Cassie’s hope that they can remain connected; and a
kind of sharing, both with her mother and her friend, a way of validating that
her family has begun to heal.
To celebrate, I offer up my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.
