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| painting lives in a private collection. more to come! |
The
Moon Cookie
by
Roxanna Groves
As
all the best stories begin, so does this one, in a time and place far away from
here and now. In this tale a rickety-rackety old house perches just on the edge
of a deep dark forest exactly between sun and shadow and uphill and down.
I
can see a little old man holding a paintbrush and a bucket and he is painting
the rickety-rackety old house pink; bright pink, flamingo pink, the pink of the
inside of a pig’s ear pink. With all the colors in the world to choose from why
is this little old man painting the house pink for the 47th time in
47 years?
Because
inside that house wrapped up in a big pink plaid apron, stirring something in a
big bowl with a wooden spoon, is a little old lady humming to herself while she
works. She is the wife of the little old man and she bakes the best cookies in
the world when she is happy. The rickety-rackety bright pink house makes her
very happy. Since the little old man loves cookies almost as much as she loves
pink, things are working out very nicely for them both.
Living
in their pink house they have just enough bad days to know that most of their
days are good days indeed. Still, they were not fond of the muddy wet winters
on the edge of the deep dark forest, which was full of both bears and
butterflies, but they knew that on the heels of the winter came the wonderful
spring and the beautiful summer to warm their old bones and grow vegetables in
their garden and apples in their orchard.
On
its’ hillside at the exact edge of the forest the pink house sat and watched
over the orchard and the meadows below. In that orchard the little old couple grew Especially
Lovely Apple trees which gave them Especially Lovely Apples. When the spring came the Old Man welcomed the
bees to the blossoms on the apple trees. “Welcome, bees! Please help yourself
to the all the apple blossom nectar you can drink and thank you for helping us
grow our Especially Lovely Apples!” he said.
As
the days grew longer, they visited the apple trees every day. They walked
through the orchard hand in hand and watched with satisfaction as little green
apples replaced the pink and white apple blossoms on the branches of the sturdy
trees. Every day the little green apples
grew and grew, and as the summer went on they became fat and juicy and
red.
One
evening as they were strolling through the orchard enjoying the apples, the
evening, and being together at the day’s
end, the Old Man turned to the Old Lady and said, “I believe that tomorrow is
the perfect day for harvesting these apples. They are especially lovely now and
it is time to take them to the market.
So
the next day they rose early when the sun’s fingers were still pink and the air
was cool. They had their usual breakfast of oatmeal with cream and a bracing
cup of tea and washed their dishes in the little stone sink. The dishes were
put away, the house was tidied and the Old Man opened the front door of the
little pink house and stepped outside with the Old Lady right behind him. They
looked at each other, nodded, smiled and headed briskly to work picking their Especially
Lovely Apples. The trees lowered their
apple filled arms so the fruit could be easily reached by the two.
They
filled all their baskets and carried them carefully to their creaky old cart
which was drawn by their creaky gray donkey.
The Old man pulled a blanket over the apples to shelter them from the
sun on the ride to town, helped his wife up to her seat on the bench at the
front of the wagon, climbed up next to her and called out, “To market, to
market Creaky Old Donkey!” The donkey brayed once and nodded his head as he
headed down the path to town on his little gray hooves.
The
cart, the apples and the pair went up a hill, across three meadows, past
several farms, through one patch of forest and down another hill before they
saw the village in the distance.
The
donkey made a right turn when he came to the market. He had been here often and
he knew lunch and nice cool water waited for him behind the blacksmith’s shop.
He stood patiently while the apples were carefully unloaded. The little donkey’s
reward for carrying them to makret was one Especially Lovely Apple, cut in
quarters and fed to him by the Old Man, his favorite treat in the whole wide
world.
The
donkey was left in the cool stable and settled down for a nice long gossip with
his friends. The Old Man headed to the market stall where the Old Lady was
already doing a brisk business in selling the Especially Lovely Apples. The
Especially Lovely Apples always sold well because everyone in the village knew
they made the best pies and apple jam in the whole wide world. Somehow there was
always just exactly the right amount of apples for everyone. No one went
without apples and there was just one apple left at the end of the day for the
Old Man and the Old Lady to share on the ride home.
Near
the day’s end, when all but the last apple was gone from the last basket the
Old Lady reached in her apron pocket and took out her little coin purse. She sighed
contentedly when she saw that it was now a fat little purse full of round copper
coins. Enough to buy flour, sugar, salt and a bit of cinnamon twisted up in
paper. There were even enough coins enough for the Old Man to buy a little can
of pink paint for the hen house.
Content
with their day, they fetched the donkey from his stay behind the blacksmith’s
shop and loaded the empty baskets back on the wagon. They climbed back into the
seat of the creaky little cart and asked the creaky little donkey to take them
home. As they rode backdown the hill, through the patch of forest, past three
meadows and several farms and up the last hill, they shared their last apple,
and the Old Lady said, “Old Man this was a good day and by the time the sun is
almost down we will reach our little pink house. We will have our supper of
soup and bread and then we will go to bed because tomorrow I will bake you a
Moon Cookie and I need my rest”. The Old
Man nodded his head and smiled, happy because he loved Moon Cookies almost as
much as he loved the Old Lady.
Early
the next morning the Old Man had his breakfast and went off to do his chores.
The Old Lady put the dishes to soak and got busy. She gathered six eggs from the
chickens living in the soon-to- be-pink hen house and took them to the kitchen.
She got out her very biggest bowl which was blue, and her very biggest spoon,
which was wooden, and put them on the table with the eggs. She fetched the
butter, flour, salt, sugar, and the cinnamon twisted up in paper from the
cupboard and put them on the table then she rolled up her sleeves and she tied
on her pink plaid apron and got to work measuring and mixing, and after a while
she rolled out a beautiful round Moon Cookie.
The
Old Man had made a fire in the round brick baking oven behind the kitchen early
in the morning and the fire was nicely settled down into glowing just right red
coals when the Old Lady carried the cookie to the oven on a big wooden paddle
and slid it in. She checked on it often because there is nothing worse tasting
than a burnt Moon Cookie.
When
it was done she slid it back on the wooden paddle and carried it into the house.
She set it on the table in front of the open window in the kitchen to cool and
she looked at it carefully. It was perfect. It was yellow on the top and golden
brown on the bottom and it was big and it was round. She nodded her head once in satisfaction, and
she went outside to find the Old Man to tell him his Moon Cookie was ready.
The
Moon Cookie sat cooling on the table and the wonderful sugary, buttery,
cinnamon smell drifted right out the window and into the orchard of Especially
Lovely Apple trees. Under those trees sat a Skinny Rabbit moaning and groaning
because he could not reach the Especially Lovely Apples. “I am so hungry and I
cannot reach the apples,” he moaned. He looked and looked but not one apple had
fallen to the ground. He groaned, “I am so hungry and not one apple has fallen
down for me to eat!”
As
he moaned and groaned under the trees his nose started to twitch. The Moon
Cookie’s delicious smell had found his pink nose and tickled it. The Skinny
Rabbit sat back on his haunches and moaned and groaned some more, “My
nose is happy but the rest of me is still unhappy because it is so empty. Can my nose show me where this wonderful
smell lives? Perhaps I can find something there to make my empty stomach happy.”
He followed his nose, sniffing the wonderful cookie smell all the way to the
window of the little pink house. He
peeked inside and saw the big round Moon Cookie cooling on the table. “I am so
hungry and I am sure that cookie will make all of me happy!” he cried.
The
rabbit slipped around the corner to the front door and scampered inside. He jumped
up on a chair and grabbed the Moon Cookie from the table and ran out with it held
tight in his arms. The Old Man and the Old Lady arrived just in time to see the
Skinny Rabbit running away as fast as he could go--which was not very fast
because he was carrying such a big cookie. “Stop, Rabbit stop! That is the Old
Man’s Moon Cookie and you cannot have it!” cried the Old Lady. She pulled off
her house slipper and threw it as hard as she could at the Skinny Rabbit.
The
house slipper flew through the air end over end. It landed with a plop on the
ears of the Skinny Rabbit. It dropped over his head like a house slipper hat
and slipped right over his eyes. Running as fast as he could with his eyes
covered he tripped on a chicken feather and fell face down in the meadow grass
still holding tightly to the Moon Cookie.
The
Old Lady and the Old Man ran panting up to the Skinny Rabbit. The Old Lady was very
grumpy because her house slipper was on the rabbit’s head and her bare foot had
found every stone on the path. The Old Man grabbed the Skinny Rabbit by his
puffy white tail and pulled the Old Lady’s shoe off the rabbit’s l ears. He
peered at him and said “What are you doing Rabbit? Stealing my cookie made just
for me! We worked hard selling our apples to earn the butter, flour, sugar and
the cinnamon in a twist of paper to make that cookie!”
The
Skinny Rabbit started crying and through his tears he told them, “I am so
hungry, I could not reach an apple on the trees because I am too short. I could
not find one on the ground because you picked them all up to sell. I was
moaning and groaning in the apple orchard and your cookie found my nose and
made it happy. I wanted the rest of me to be happy too, so I followed my nose
and stole your cookie. I am sorry, but you see I am so very hungry I couldn’t
help myself.” Rabbit tears ran down his delicate pink nose and splashed on the
ground as he stood sadly in front of the Old Lady and the Old Man.
The
Old Lady looked at his tear-wet pink nose and remembered how much she loved
pink. She patted the Skinny Rabbit on his head and said to him, “Rabbit, you can
come live with us and the Old Man will build you your own rabbit hutch to live
in. When we sell more apples we will get a little can of paint to paint it pink
because the Old Man wants everything to match and I love to make him happy. I
will bake you your own Moon Cookie and I will give you a job. You will earn your cookie every month instead
of stealing it.
Your
job is to take a Moon Cookie I will bake for you each month and to nibble it to
show how time passes in the sky. You will now be in charge of the full moon,
the half moon, the quarter moon, the fingerling moon and all the phases of the
moon. You must remember to nibble carefully because all the people use the moon
to know when to plant and when to harvest. If you get greedy and eat too much at once,
things will not go well in the world. If the crops are not planted and
harvested at the right time, I cannot buy the butter, the flour, the sugar,
salt and the cinnamon in a twist of paper to make your Moon Cookie and you will
be a Skinny Rabbit again.”
The
Skinny Rabbit paid careful attention to the Old Lady’s words. He is
now an Especially Fat Rabbit and he never moans and groans anymore. He lives in a pink rabbit hutch and he takes
his job very seriously. You can tell because if you watch the sky carefully at
night you’ll see a big, yellow, round Moon Cookie disappear a nibble at a time
every single month. And as far as I know the Old Lady and the Old
Man are still growing Especially Lovely Apples and making each other especially
happy.
