When first married, my second job was teaching tennis at a summer tennis camp.
On the first morning before departing for the courts, I got scared. I was excited, but given that it was a new job, fright was appropriate.
I turned to Tony, and asked, "Can I just stay home and bake cookies?"
He laughed.
He laughed because he knew I would never be content to skip tennis camp to bake cookies.
There are a lot of noble, strong women who do stay home and bake cookies. Remember Debbie Fields? Remember your mom when she had made after-school cookies? Was there any greater security than walking into a home with the smell of soft, warm cookies?
If you were around in 1992, you may remember the Hillary Clinton cookie faux pas. From a 2016 NY Times article written by Amy Chozick**, is a replay of the misspoken words:
With a single response in 1992 to a question about her legal career, Hillary Clinton became a radical feminist in her critics’ imagination, the Lady Macbeth who was an affront to the choices so many other women had made.
“I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession,” she said during Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign.
The blowback was intense and she spent weeks apologizing, saying that she respected women who chose to stay at home and raise children. Family Circle magazine invited her to and Barbara Bush to submit recipes for a chocolate-chip cookie bake-off, and she obliged.**
There's tremendous security in baking cookies. When someone bakes me cookies, I'm loved. When I make someone cookies, I love them.
This morning when faced with insecurity, I turned to a different source of comfort. Before Tony helped me carry my paddle board out to the ocean, I had a thought: I want to crawl in bed and binge watch a series we started last night: Night Sky.
Only because over the last two years, the ocean has been closed from bacteria overload. This has caused a lot of anguish and senator-writing. I didn't expect to paddle this trip, but the ocean joyfully and unexpectedly opened. The yellow warning signs were gone. I was so happy...but then I actually had to put on a wet suit and plunge into the cold Pacific. I wavered for just enough seconds to think of our warm bed and a Netflix binge.
Tony didn't have a chance to laugh, because I kept the thought to myself.
Here is my takeaway: on the verge of doing good, of doing something monumental and powerful, you're going to get scared. You'll want to bake cookies or binge on Netflix...but remember you're on the verge of excitement, fun, and maybe a little danger.
Embrace it and make the cookies later--as your reward.
**https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/us/politics/hillary-clinton-cookies.html
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