Michael's Cookies

The other night my beloved came home in a quiet mood. He is a busy man who carries the weight of the world sometimes. He has had a business for twelve years and has recently become a teacher at our high school, I am very proud of all he does. On this particular night he had slipped into some comfortable clothes and was working on some school work when I remembered I needed something at the store…I mentioned it to him and he kindly volunteered to go for me. When he returned I noticed he had bought some slice-n-bake cookies. “Had a cravin” is all he said. I smiled and went back to what I was doing. He popped his cookies into the oven and waited. One of the kids called him from upstairs. That’s when Micah got her bright idea…she thought she’d get her daddy laughing if she played a little joke on him. When the cookies were done he was back to get them out and wait for them to cool, have I mentioned his patience? He left the room for another minute and Micah went to work. She emptied the cookie sheet of all but the crumbs of two cookies. She then went to the front door and opened and closed it…she made a rather loud comment about how those were Daddy’s cookies and they better leave him some and then went to the back door, opened and closed it. She was certain her daddy heard all of this. We listened from another room when he went into the kitchen. We waited for him to yell or something…but all we heard was the refrigerator open and shut then silence. My heart sank. I knew this was not going to be funny. When we peeked around the corner my sweet husband was standing at the stove eating the crumbs left from his cookies. He wasn’t going to say a word. Micah said, “Dad! What are you doing?!”, he responded “Eating my cookies”. Of course we both wanted to cry! I felt like a jerk for going along with the joke. He thought the boys had walked though the house, devoured the cookies and he was just left with the crumbs…what a prize I have in him….Dear Lord, please let him live at least one day longer than me.