Don't punish the cookie

My daddy was always a rock for me but never more so than in that first year after both my husband and my mother died, even though that meant he’d lost a wife and a “son.”

He was a country boy and a World War II veteran and a bit of an anomaly among his peers because he never drank, at any age, unless medicinal of course. He was also a practical man. He saw no need to monitor his eating intake and, since he lived to be 91, all my sage nutritional advice fell on deaf ears.

In these latter years, he found a cookie that he really, really liked. He was enjoying one once and between bites mentioned that a friend had pointed out that the ingredients included alcohol. I raised my eyebrows. Daddy just reached for another one and, with simple wisdom and a lack of offense that I often think the world would do well to emulate, advised me, “I see no reason to punish the cookie.”