Cooked Cookies 2

Space Age Family

Last week, we left Sadie at the beach.

“Sadie slips the sand dollar into the mesh shell collection bag strapped around her waist. “This island is all I have left of him. That and the cooked cookies.”

“Cooked Cookies” continues.

Part 2

They had discovered the island via outer space. Their father’s job as a NASA engineer brought the family to Florida where they lived close enough to Cape Canaveral to stand in the backyard and watch the rockets launch.With the transistor radio blaring out the countdown to zero, all eyes turned toward the sky in search of the bullet shooting towards the heavens. Whoever spotted the fiery glint first would point and shout, I see it, there it is! Go baby go! They waved and cheered as the ship climbed upward and onward until poof, it winked out of sight into the dark beyond, leaving behind a pillared column trail and a distant thunder of engines to mark the flight.

They were mid-century modern pioneers, a space family living the heyday of the race to the moon. The space industry employed most of the men in the neighborhood who all became official NASA property pre and post launch, ghosting families of high tech and support personnel, often for days at a time. Working and living as part of a world where life revolved around whenever the next window opened for a scheduled mission meant mothers typically stayed home to manage the everyday, which their mother did as effectively as when employed as a secretary for a research scientist. The logistics of returning to the work world with three children and an intermittent husband proved difficult if not impossible, so she realigned her focus to meet the needs of the family and volunteered outside the home when time allowed, mostly in activities that involved her children. Weekends were the payoff, finding them on the beach, with blankets and chairs tucked out of the sun under an old fishing pier. They waded and built sand castles, scooped up sand fleas or walked the shoreline in search for whatever the ocean offered up, filling plastic pails with shells, driftwood, black sea beans or trinkets of glass tumbled smooth by the waves.

Sadie’s passion for shelling was obvious by her posture. She searched in constant stoop, her nimble fingers plucking shells from the warm water or the crusty shell grit covering the beach. Heading up to the hot sand, she picked through the belly of cliff-like ridges revealed with the recession of the tide, bucketing finds for the trip home where she cleaned and glued the collection of lightning whelks and calico scallops, olive shells, fighting conch and spiny murex on long palm frond husks. Sadie’s mother encouraged her avid interest and upon learning of a Girl Scout shelling jamboree on a tiny island located off the southwest coast, she made two phone calls--the first, to register her daughter as a participant and the second, to persuade her sister-in-law into coming along with her kids, so they could share the costs of a motel, since Luke was a boy and no boy could sleep over at the scout house with girls, even if three of the girls were his sisters.

Everyone learned the number one rule of the island the first day of the jamboree—let the living be. The guide held both live and dead shells to their noses for comparison and if the whiff of rotting fish left any possible hesitation of what lie within, the demonstration of placing the creature on the surf’s edge resolved all doubt. If it feels safe, she said, the living will crawl home, moving back to the same spot where collected. She released the eager shell-seekers to the first pinks of the sun, armed with sifters and buckets. On the same day astronaut Neil Armstrong took the first step on the moon, six-year-old Luke—surrounded by Girl Scouts wearing green Bermuda shorts- found the first sand dollar of the day, bleached white in death. He slid his hand beneath the fragile being and asked the guide for an official declaration of demise. Upon learning the dollar had been stranded too far from shore to save itself, he spent the remainder of the trip throwing every live dollar washed up by the tide back into the sea.

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To be continued …

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Fun CC factoid.

“Cooked Cookies” was submitted as part of my successful application to the AWP Writer to Writer Mentorship Program (2018).

The AWP Writer to Writer Mentorship Program matches emerging writers with established authors for a three-month series of modules on topics such as craft, revision, publishing, and the writing life. Mentors volunteer their time and receive a free one-year AWP individual membership as a token of appreciation. Writer to Writer is free of charge to mentees, though they must be AWP members to apply.

Writer to Writer runs twice per year. Mentor applications are open year-round via our online submission portal; if space fills up, we will keep applications on file for future seasons. Season 21 runs May 5–July 25, 2025. The next round of mentee applications will open in summer 2025; keep an eye on our social media channels and newsletter so you don’t miss it!

Learn more about this fantastic opportunity here.

Thank you for reading.