LIVING COLOR

Start with some powdered sugar, butter, and milk. Throw in a dash of food coloring, a little imagination, a few giggles and some heartfelt love...and voila! Life goes from black-and white to technicolor in the space of a nano-second.

She'd never baked Christmas cookies. And I'd never mentored a foster child. So this was unfamiliar territory for both of us.

True, we'd been counselor and camper two years ago, and had gotten along great. But we both knew this was different. This was real life. Home turf. There were no programs to follow or rules to guide us. And besides, in kid terms, two years is an absolute eternity. So like bewildered calves let out of the stall, we both looked more lost than liberated in our new surroundings.

We politely made our way to the kitchen and did our best to muddle through the preliminaries. Get out the ingredients. Acquaint her with the kitchen. Organize a workspace. There we go, easy does it. Nothing like sorting out mixing bowls and baking utensils to break the ice.

Then we started the actual baking. Thankfully, I'd mixed up the dough the night before, so we were able to dig right in. I showed her the various shapes...Christmas tree, stocking, star, angel...and gave her a brief lesson on rolling out dough. Then came the fun part: using the cookie cutters, peeling off the excess dough, and placing the treasured shapes onto the cookie sheet. 

We "oohed and awed" over each new creation, as if they were the first sugar cookies ever produced. For in a very real sense, they were. This was a first-time-ever experience for her, as well as for us together. As our nervousness gradually receded, it was replaced by an eager camaraderie. We were a unit, a team. And together we were doing the near-impossible: getting that unruly batter to submit and transform itself into yummy holiday treats!

And then, as the smell of baking cookies filled the kitchen, the real fun began: the frosting. Mixing it up from scratch. Watching the blender turn chunks of lumpy butter into creamy delight. Seeing a girl of eleven become a bonafide baker before your very eyes. And then the sheer joy of squeezing dark-colored liquid out of tiny bottles, turning pasty white frosting into vivid color. It truly was a thing of wonder.

After a quick dinner break, we rolled up our sleeves and in assembly-line fashion began painting our prized creations. I slathered on red or green as a base coat, and passed them on to my esteemed colleague. With artistic precision, she added the finishing touches, squeezing yellow or blue frosting out of our own handmade decorative tubes. We were an inseparable team...Laurel and Hardy, Batman and Robin, Martha Stewart and Emeril all rolled into one!

From strained silence to giggles and laughter. From polite distance to heads bent together, plotting and planning in front of a crackling fire. From stark black-and-white to fully vibrant, living color.

As we cleaned up the kitchen and boxed up the cookies, I reflected in awe on the transformation that had just occurred. She'd never baked Christmas cookies. And I'd never mentored a foster child. Yet together, we had just built a memory that would last a lifetime.