Or maybe it was something else, something less about technique and more about mindset

Illustration: Dov-Ber Cohen

"Have some cookies. I made them for you.”

I was nine years old and this was one of the rare times I was visiting my grandparents. They lived in far-off Miami and their small apartment didn’t have room for our large, boisterous family. So we almost never visited them; they came to us several times a year instead.

Now, though, my parents had taken advantage of midwinter vacation to plan a grand trip to Disney World. Before heading to Orlando, we visited Miami and ate a meal at my grandparents’ home. I don’t remember the meal. But I do remember the cookies that my grandmother had made for her visitors. They were so dry and hard, we could barely bite into them.

But she had made them for us.

My grandmother was brittle, too.