The Consolation of Molasses Cookies

Just a moment ago, I pulled a tray of molasses cookies from the oven, and as I write this, their rich aroma fills the house.

In our home, my wife is the cook and baker, and any trip I make into the kitchen for anything other than a snack, is looked upon with no small amount of suspicion from her. But today is different. It’s different for a couple of reasons.

First, it’s different because my wife and children are not home. They’re off galavanting in Kalamazoo, priming the pump for the Christmas festivities that will shortly commence. So, like Kevin McCallister, I am home alone, free to traipse into the kitchen with abandon.

The second reason — the real reason — is that I miss my friend.

Don Greenleaf died one year ago today, just a few days after receiving a cancer diagnosis. He was a good friend, a man generous with his myriad talents: gardening, growing flowers, refinishing furniture, baking, playing the piano and organ.

As I think back on it, I cannot recall a time when I did not know who Don Greenleaf was. Growing up in a small town, I always knew Don as the man with the big, blue Buick Electra 225, a vehicle he bought brand new, back in 1973, with my grandfather’s guidance. He was the pianist at countless weddings, the organist at as many funerals. In fact, the sound I associated with him was the tremulous sound of the funeral home’s Hammond B3 organ.

I do not know how, exactly, Don and I became friends. I suppose it was the combination of our shared appreciation for those things some call “vintage” — fountain pens, classic cars, handwritten letters, nice furniture — and our brotherhood in the Lord that did it.

By the time we became friends, I was living out west and he was in Cass City. We spoke on the phone once or twice a week, at which time he would usually have a story or two to tell about the town’s past.

That was a remarkable thing about Don: owing to his having worked at a local bank and having played at the bulk of the town’s weddings and funerals for some 50 years, he knew virtually everyone in the village. In fact, during one visit back to Cass City, I drove Don up and down several of the town’s streets. Randomly, I would point to a house and ask Don to tell me something about it, and he could!

Lest you think ours was a one-way friendship, I must say that one of my thrills was hearing the amazement in Don’s voice when I found an obscure gospel record album on eBay for him, or when I could, with just a few taps and swipes, bring up a particular seed company’s contact information. Only in those moments did I sense the age gap between us.

With few exceptions, I never felt the sense of warmth and welcome so keenly as I did when I walked through the door to Don Greenleaf’s home. Built some time in the late 1800s, the house always smelled like the freshly baked something or other he was about to pull from the oven. 

At what would be our last visit together at Don’s home, my wife and I walked into a kitchen filled with the smell of homemade bread. Though our visit had been unexpected, Don cheerily seated us in the living room, where he served us thick slices of hot bread, a smear of butter melting on top, and then played our requests on the piano.

The smell that takes me back to Don’s house in an instant, however, is the smell of his molasses cookies. As far as I can tell, there is nothing particularly unique about his recipe; but when I woke up this morning with Don on my mind, I knew that only his recipe would do.

I dug through the recipe box and found the card Don had typed up for me (on his typewriter, no less). I measured out the spices, flour, and sugar, cracked the egg, added the oil, mixed it together, formed the cookies into balls, and put them in the oven.

Ten minutes passed, and the timer beeped. I pulled the cookies from the oven. A few minutes later, a glass of almond milk in hand, I took a bite of a warm cookie. Thank you for Don, Lord, I thought silently.

There, in that moment, was the Good News in miniature form: the bitterness that comes with the loss of a friend combined with the sweetness of Jesus’ promise that “he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life” (John 5:24).

I am thankful for that consolation and for the reminder of it, thanks to a batch of molasses cookies.