Springs Arrives Amid Cookie Drive

You may have seen me recently. I was the one planted behind a table at the entrance to a number of local grocery and retail stores. It was my little Girl Scout asking if you’d like to buy any cookies. I stayed in the background while she sold her heart out.
This is my daughter Paige’s third year in Girl Scouts, her second year selling cookies and my first in being the troop’s cookie manager. I was naïve enough to believe her troop leaders when they said being the cookie mom wouldn’t be terribly difficult.
Until I walked in the previous cookie mom’s shoes I had no idea how much work went into the annual cookie drive. For nearly three weeks we had cases of cookies traveling from our house to booth sites. Boxes of cookies sat in our front room teasing two-year-old Drew. Fortunately my fear of him tearing into hundreds of cookies went unfounded.
With Paige being school-aged we have sought out programs that help her fit into our current area. A program such as Girl Scouts offers her a chance to blend into a new setting while still retaining the core beliefs and structure of the previous one.
More so than the adults in a military family, military kids are perhaps the ones that carry the most weight on their little shoulders. With each move we ask them to say good-bye to friends that they may never see again. We ask them to carry on when a parent is sent away to a dangerous and often lengthy deployment. Mostly, we ask them to understand a way of life that sometimes we as adults cannot even grasp.
My hope is that my kids will see that children in Texas, Florida or Wisconsin are really the same as the children they meet here in Washington. Girl or Boy Scouts and similar programs help facilitate that goal.
We are blessed with Paige’s placement in her current Girl Scout troop. Her leaders have dedicated vast amounts of time and energy to nurture thirteen girls on a weekly basis. I applaud every troop leader who volunteers their time to their scouts.
In selling boxes of cookies, Paige has witnessed what hard work can do. Her troop will be attending camp this spring, funded on the profits from this year’s cookie sales.
While participating in booth sites, Paige and I were able to create our own special memories. We witnessed the kindness and friendliness of our fellow South Hill neighbors. Random comments from strangers prompted more in-depth conversations between the two of us.
On our last Sunday of selling, as I was pulling two cartloads of cookies to our last booth site, Paige turned to me and said, “Mommy, you are beautiful.” Every bit of anxiety I have experienced at being a cookie mom was completely washed away. For that brief moment my daughter, who looks like me, melted my heart.