Adventures of Amy and Momoh

From the blooper reel – the sun was so bright and we didn’t have shades! A pic from the first wedding we went to together – there will certainly be more! – with some beautiful October leaves in the background. ❤

In honor of the first day of our single digit countdown, I’m going to share the “cookie girl” story that I shared with one of our officiants this morning.

9 days until Momoh marries his cookie girl!

When we dated the first time, I was working at Eileen’s Colossal Cookies during summer and holiday breaks. I knew that Momoh liked cookies and one of my love languages is acts of kindness. So in this case, with 1,000 miles between us, I had to give/send gifts him in the mail. I still do send him things quite often, now though it’s Eat Fresh cards and love notes, I just don’t send cookies anymore because I don’t work at a cookie store. Somehow my life in academia isn’t as much fun as creating things with icing… Though I did get pretty good at making sourdough in the last year! Anyway, I think he must have shared the cookies with his mom, Mary, as I’m pretty sure he was still living at home at the time. I remember talking to her on the phone a few times, and maybe sent some special cookies just for her or something, but I think she really remembered my kindness and appreciated me sending love to Momoh that way.

Momoh says that his mom really didn’t like the girl he chose to date and marry when he ended things with me – sorry, not sorry, for her. Maybe, and this could just be my interpretation of the story, Mary was even a little happy when the relationship ended relatively quickly because she knew they weren’t right for each other. After that, whenever Mary met a new person that he was dating or when they talked about his love life, she would always ask him, “what ever happened to the cookie girl?” He says he was always trying to find me when she asked, but we joke about how locked down my social media must be because he never could find me anywhere. Damn the algorithm, I guess. When Momoh reported to Mary that he didn’t know where I was and told her that he couldn’t find me, she would scold him and tell him how foolish he was for ending things and losing track of me. When he tells me this story, he adds little tongue clicks of shame and kind of wags his finger like she would have done.

This story is very important to me, and to us, because I never had a chance to meet Mary in person. She passed away several years ago and I often wish I had the opportunity to get to know her as a mother-in-law and to see how she interacted with the world. I think we would have really clicked. She was feisty, funny, and wasn’t afraid to tell people what she thought… those are, of course, my interpretations of her through the stories Momoh has told me. Every time I think about this “cookie girl” story, I can feel her approval for our marriage now. I know how special Momoh was to her and how much she loved and appreciated that he was in Minnesota with her. I’m not sure she ever would have let him move away, so it’s sometimes hard for me that Momoh is so eager to move to Wyoming when Mary’s presence is all around Brooklyn Park. But I also feel her smiling down on us and feeling happy that he finally found his cookie girl again. And he guarantees that she would have loved me. He has even told me about dreams that he can’t find me and it’s because I’m off somewhere talking to his mom and going to join her in a church choir instead of going home like we planned. 

Now it’s 9 days until forever. 9 days until I can be the cookie girl who doesn’t have to send cookies to Minnesota, but can just bake them in our shared oven with the same amount of love. 9. More. Days.

-xo- Amy