I really love Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies.
There are certainly better chocolate chip cookies—warm, soft and chewy, made with artisan chocolate, browned butter and fancy, flaked salt. But I really love these cookies. What separates them from all the others certainly isn’t taste. It’s the gratitude I feel when I eat one.
Here’s why.
In the Summer of 1970, Dad was transferred to the Navy base on the tiny Aleutian island of Adak, Alaska. To a seven-year-old kid, Adak felt so far from our little ranch house on Madison Avenue in Pensacola, Florida. The island sat halfway between Anchorage and Russia. I had lived in San Diego and Panama before Florida, so sunshine and warmth were all I really knew. Alaska was going to be different.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t travel together. Dad had to leave ahead of us and it would be several months before we could join him.
Before he left, he knelt down in front of me.
“Sonny, I need you to be the man of the house. Take good care of your mother, Travis, and your sisters. We’ll all be back together in no time at all.”
I was the oldest of four and Mom was expecting number five. My dad meant encouragement, not burden—but to a seven-year-old, it felt like both. I took my assignment seriously. I had a big job to do.
Months later, on a cold, rainy, blustery October day—typical Adak weather—we stepped off a Reeves Aleutian Airways DC-6 down the stairs onto the tarmac at Adak Naval Air Station. Mom and my siblings ran ahead, straight into Dad’s arms.
I stood at the bottom of the stairs, transfixed at the reunion unfolding before me . . . wondering.
Did I do okay?
Was I the man Dad asked me to be?
Tears welled up. I guess it really didn’t matter. We were together again and that was the important thing. I ran ahead to join the celebration.
In no time, we were crammed into a ‘63 Rambler station wagon on our way to our new home—a small duplex on Salmon Circle.
I ran inside to check out our new home and there it was! A box of Chips Ahoy cookies on the kitchen counter. And shortly thereafter, with cookies and cold glasses of milk, we celebrated our family reunited again.
Sometimes memories of family, friends and gratitude are not as grand, quintessential, and Norman Rockwellian as a perfectly staged Thanksgiving table with a bronzed, twenty-pound bird. Sometimes (most times) they are quieter, understated, and sneak up on you—even as a simple box of cookies. These many years later, when I eat one of those bone-dry Chips Ahoy cookies, I’m reminded how gratitude often hides in the ordinary—waiting patiently to be remembered and treasured.
I love Chips Ahoy cookies to this day
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