We bake and cook a lot. Besides making three delicious and wholesomeish meals a day, Friday is my bread day. This could be muffins, zucchini bread, English muffins, focaccia, pizza dough etc. We try to be glutenless (not gluten free, just less gluten), so I make our baked goods with spelt flour, and all of our digestive systems benefit. Sunday morning I make either bulk pancakes or waffles and what does not get consumed is saved and pulled out for snacks or a backup meal during the week. Sunday afternoon is our family dessert bake. Me and my husband think up some over the top dessert and make it with the kids. We are talking a cannoli inspired cheesecake, all kinds of cookies, a terrine, pineapple upside down cake, a chai inspired cheesecake, no bake cookies with corn flakes, or anything else I happen to be craving.

Now as I have mentioned before we live in an intentional community, and my husband happens to be the CFO. Which means dude has a desk job and isn’t always available to be at my beck and call when something breaks or I just need help. So I call up one of the other houses here to get my needs met. Sometimes I ship one of the kids off to another house, or someone listens to me complain, or someone who knows much more about tools than me (insert picture of me hammering a nail into the wall with a shoe because I kept missing with a hammer) comes to fix a problem. Now whenever a person comes into the house to help with anything, they leave with a piece of pie, cake, galette, or whatever else I have on hand.

Today we had an issue that exceeded the expertise that could be russeled up within the community. We were having issues with our on demand water heater. The water doesn’t really get hot anymore, and then when it gets as hot as it’s gonna get, it gets cold again and the process starts all over. Plus our water pressure was getting to the point where it was taking forever to rinse shampoo out of my hair. Like so long that my front half is getting cold before all the suds are out.

No bueno.

After my third weak pressured lukewarm/cold shower this week I called for professional help.

So the guys are here, and they are doing stuff. I am not sure exactly what they are doing but there is now no hot water, and they are making a big ass mess in my bathroom. They come out and show me some sort of valve that is completely filled with calcium from our water. They go to their van to get what they need and promise it will all be set in half an hour.

While they are outside my son turns to me and says ”Mom we need some of those fixin cookies” This confused me and I asked for further explanation. ”You know the cookies we give out when someone fixes something.” and my heart melted a little. Because the kid gets it. Yeah, they can come fix our stuff. And yeah, we can pay them. But that isn’t how you say thank you, and that isn’t how relationships are formed. Alden knows that when we bake, we put all of our love and good intentions into what we are doing. He knows that when we are baking it brings us closer, that we are working together to create something wholesome and contributing to the household. Most importantly he knows that when we share these things with others we are passing along all that good juju. I personally believe it is these small acts that change the world and make it a better place. When we share these best bits of ourselves we are healing cultural wounds.

So those two men left each with their own bag of cookies, and a picture colored by the kids. I know these guys will remember us. I know that if we have a plumbing problem again those guys will remember my three cutie patooties and come as soon as they can, and if that happens they will sure as shit get some more fixin cookies. More importantly, we shared a piece of ourselves with them, something to take home, a gesture to pass on to someone else.