I was exactly six years old on the Sunday that would change my appetite for cookies forever.
My mother and I had moved across the city to live with my grandmother, I called her Gamma from as far back as the first day I met her because I had a difficult time pronouncing the letter R.
My mom and dad had been arguing quite a lot and then she told me that we needed a change so that we could figure things out. So we left behind friends and everything I knew to be familiar to live with Gamma even though I had no idea what it was that I had to figure out.
Regardless of how we came about it I was thrilled to be living in my grandmother's house. She always made these thin lemony sugar cookies that are still the best I had ever tasted and living in her house meant to me that I could have them everyday instead of just the holidays.
She also had the most incredible house I had ever seen in my whole life, full of memories and exotic things to toy with a child's imagination. Her house held wonderful memories of holidays and happiness and nothing more.
We moved in on a very cold day and I was told that I could pick any room as my own, so I picked the room with a fireplace that was separated from my Gamma's room by an unlockable door. I thought that having a fireplace in the bedroom was a very incredible thing, and it made me feel special and even warmer in a small way even though there was never a fire lit in it.
My mother was in the room across the hall from mine and we shared a bathroom with an enormous bathtub that had feet underneath and a tall mirror that swings up and down.
There was also an added bonus to staying in my chosen bedroom; when I would lie upside down on my bed at night I could see my Gamma laying on her bed through the open doorway and we would make faces and finger shadows at each other, quietly laughing until one of us would fall asleep.
I would put my pillow at the foot of the bed and cover myself with the blankets upside down so that she was within my sight all night long. This is how I slept every night that year.
My room was painted blue with sail ships in a border around the center of the walls. I had two curtained windows that looked out over the backyard and I could clearly see my favorite spot in the whole world from there.