Cookie Therapy: The Bakersfield Cookie

(Though the story is hard to swallow, the cookie is not!!! it's quite delicious and comforting.)

I can’t think on this time last year without feeling a huge knot forming in my chest. I’m slapped with a painful mirage of images; my father’s sterile apartment, his wheel-chair bound roommates planted in front of the TV, the teenage resident assistants scribbling in their binders in the corner, a shelf in the pantry meagerly filled with items that had “Nemer” inscribed by Sharpie on the side. I see the desolate and depressing strip malls of Bakersfield and the hideous 70’s carpet that lined the halls of the Double Tree hotel. I see the appetizer special and that beautiful beacon glass of chardonnay at the Black Angus bar. I see the unexplained scrapes and bruises on the side of my Dad’s face. How did we endure it all? How did we all endure it? How did time fly so fast to a year later?

My father’s two-month stint at cognitive rehab in Bakersfield was probably the most painful and inexplainable experience we have ever had to endure. Due to a halt in progress in outpatient therapy, doubled with extreme aggression and lashing out, my father’s prescription pointed to inpatient therapy in Bakersfield. The routine and intensity was intended to give my Dad greater clarity, function, and independence. If anything it simply traumatized him.

We visited him every weekend. Making the hour and half drive through the grapevine a daunting and endless ride. What would we expect when we reached his apartment? What mood would he be in? Would he be crying? He cried almost all the time. We would check in at the Double Tree because it was the only hotel that would allow Jenny and Melvin. And thank God for them. The saviors of the trip. These two would cram into my Prius and then patiently hole up in the hotel room while we spent time with Dad. We usually went to Black Angus for dinner – me, my Mom, Dad, and his caretaker, Sarah. She’d fill us in on the progress and activities Dad participated in during the week. Sarah said he always rose to the occasion and stopped crying when we were there. Then we’d go back to the hotel and Dad and I would take the doggies on a little walk through the parking lot before he would have to get back in the van and be taken back to his apartment. The whole time not understanding why we were where we were.

Last Sunday I stayed by his side to watch the Superbowl. I had three party invitations, but between the memory of last year and having a show to perform in the evening, I opted to stay on the couch next to my Dad. (He didn’t get invited to any parties this year, even though he enjoys sports with the same enthusiasm and commentary that he had pre-brain injury.) Regardless, the memory of last years Superbowl was so palpable. I was visiting him that Sunday on my own, and I was supposed to meet my running buddy friends to watch the game later. So after some time with my father, I left him in his room in front of the TV with a pathetic bowl of pretzels at his side, his roommate and resident assistants all in their own corners of the tiny apartment, no one really talking, no one really caring. I cried in my car driving away – as I did almost every time I was alone – thinking with hope, that this too shall pass. It’s just a game, it’s just another Sunday, four more to go and then he comes home.

I’m glad I stayed home on Sunday. We made a frozen pizza together – and by make I mean he put it in the oven and sliced it in perfectly equal triangles. I also made chocolate chip cookies. Which Dad helped me assemble as well: he whisked the dry ingredients and helped scoop them onto the cookie sheet. Then we watched the opening ceremony of the Superbowl, cried at the National Anthem, and chomped away on fresh-baked cookies and milk.

As I bit into my chewy chocolate chip cookie, I remembered the one redeeming thing I looked forward to when checking into that hotel in Bakersfield: the Double Tree chocolate chip cookie. They always give you a big fresh-baked cookie at the desk when you get your key. As if they knew I needed something sweet to take the sting out of the weekend. I would never ever go back to that place just to experience the cookie again, but chocolate chip cookies have a way of combating pain. So here’s my double-tree cookie recreation, the baking-equivalent of a band-aid for an unhealed cut made 12 months ago.