the way the cookie crumbles

You are looking at the last Mother's mini sugar cookie in existence. I'm guessing here, of course. But if it's not the last, it's close to the last.

The Mother's cookie company closed its door in October. I was really sad when I heard about it - like the fact that the owners didn't give their employees any notice, that there wasn't a severance package or any help for these folks. I was also really sad because Mother's has made, hands down, the absolute best mass-produced sugar cookie on the market.

I used to eat them at our neighbor Jackie's house when I was a little girl. I liked to hold the cookie with my finger in the center indention and eat around it like a wheel. My last bite would be the part with the little finger-print mark. Childhood and sugar cookies are inexplicably intertwined for me. I couldn't find the sugar cookies when I moved to Washington. I searched every grocery store and market. Mom would buy them for me in California, and later, in Utah when they moved there. She would pack four or five or six packages in her suitcase and hand them over like plastic-wrapped bricks of gold. I would eat the cookies one by one, savoring each one, knowing that they had to last a long while. There was a rule in our house that NO ONE TOUCHED WHIMSY'S SUGAR COOKIES. I have hid them from small children and felt no guilt whatsoever, leaving nieces and nephews to eat pieces of toast. When the imported cookies had been eaten, and another shipment was a long ways off, Chip and I would buy Mother's Cookie Parade - the very familiar bag of mini cookies, with the pink and white frosted circus animal cookies, the chocolate chip cookies, the chocolate sandwich cookies, and of course, my beloved sugars - this time in an adorable mini version. Very early in our relationship, I established the following Mother's Cookie Parade rule: the Whimsy has first dibs on the sugar cookies and the chocolate chip cookies. The Chip can have free reign of the circus animals and the chocolate sandwich cookies. It was a happy compromise, and lent a very real sense of Made to Be when I realized that both Chip and I could eat an entire Cookie Parade bag without feeling jealous of the other one's cookie preferences.

I wish I'd bought a million bags of cookie parade when I had the chance. October saw the end of my lovely lovely sugars. We bought the last two bags at Target on clearance last month. And a couple of weeks ago, I ate my last little sugary treat.


But I took a picture first.

For the memories.


Now tell me - which cookie was your favorite in the Cookie Parade bag? And if you somehow were left inexplicably wanting, which oddball Mother's cookie are you going to miss most?