C is For Cookie Table

What are two words that instantly bring a smile to one’s face?

Besides "open bar"?

If you are truly from western PA, you probably guessed it.

COOKIE TABLE. 

Yes, the beloved cookie table that is a sight to behold and one that, for adults, is like being a kid browsing through the Target toy catalogue to get ideas for a Christmas list. “I need one of these. And one of these and maybe even one of those.”

I don’t remember my first cookie table experience. My family didn’t go to tons of weddings when I was younger but I do remember waking up the next morning, after such an event, and finding the small Styrofoam containers on the kitchen table; like an invitation to come to the party one more time. Prying open the lid I was filled with anticipation. Wondering, would there be anything chocolate I could nibble on? Or maybe a thumbprint or peanut butter blossom?

When you grow up in the Pittsburgh area, or I guess even more broadly the tri-state area, you assume this is something everyone does. It is funny for me to think about it now because, in a way, it is on par with other traditions I have experienced like my family’s Easter dinner where we have five kinds of meat and one side. 

The cookie table is a dessert after the dessert. The cake is the centerpiece of a wedding. A gorgeous work of art that is supposed to be the most decadent thing you’ll ever eat but then as if that’s not enough you get to wash it down with some cookies. 

There has been some controversy over how and where the cookie table started. But from a quick Google search, I learned that the tradition started in southwestern Pennsylvania during the Great Depression when families could not afford to have a wedding cake at the reception. The bride’s family make cookies for the guests as a labor of love to represent love on the special day.

It is a tradition that has carried on for close to 100 years. I regret that I don’t really remember the cookie table at my wedding but I do remember the planning that went into it. My mom took the responsibility seriously and contacted family and friends to volunteer their special delicacy to adorn the coveted table. 

Even though off hand I can’t for sure say what kinds of cookies were available to nosh on at my reception, I am sure my mom’s tasty lady locks were there - her pride and joy. As a child, I used to help fill those delicate cookies and make a crumb sundae with the broken pieces and the sweet, whipped icing left over from the decorating bag. 

Fast forward to 2001, my husband and I were living near Virginia Beach and we attended our first wedding south of the Mason-Dixon line. We were excited to see how the other half lives and find out what kinds of cookies we would bring home for later. (My husband and I were often homesick and any reminder of the Burgh was a joy and a comfort.)

Imagine our surprise when we discovered there was NO cookie table! We walked around the reception hall, opening closed doors, looking under tablecloths, like an addict needing their next hit, we needed the cookies and there were none to be had. We went home disappointed but more shocked to find out not everyone in the world engaged in this tradition or even heard of it for that matter. 

Years later, after we moved home, fate made amends for this sad little experience when we attended an Italian wedding. Our neighbors’ daughter was getting married and boy were we in for a treat. At this reception, there wasn’t a cookie table, there was a cookie suite! We walked in a door and made our way through a maze of COOKIES ending up on the other side of the reception hall dazed and amazed. 

There were varieties I had never seen before. My eyes were wide, my heart was palpitating and my box was way too small. Luckily, being the awesome neighbors they are, they brought over some extra treats the very next day to share with our kiddos. We felt like we won the cookie lottery and had been given the best prize ever!

So why am I going on and on about a cookie table? A college friend of mine is getting married in a few weeks and his bride is from south of the Mason-Dixon line. She did not grow up with the cookie table tradition but is having a Pittsburgh wedding. She felt the pressure. She needed to have a cookie table. 

When she was telling me her story, I felt like Arnold Horshack from Welcome Back, Kotter. My hand went up and “Ooooh, ooooh, oooooh, I’ll make some cookies for your table!”

This weekend, I’ll be making a few batches of my tasty snickerdoodles. I am so proud to finally get the chance to be a part of an actual cookie table and have my little babies lined up with other bite sized confections.

But first, the biggest challenge, making sure my family doesn’t eat them first!

Deferred But Not Forgotten

I never imagined it would take this long.

Just this week, a week in October of 2021, I made my final student loan payment. Not for any of my children, mind you, for myself, twenty-five years after I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown.

I was a bright eyed optimistic young gal when I graduated from college with a degree in communications in May of 1996. I had just secured a part-time job at a Johnstown television station and was looking for an apartment. 

It would be a few months before I would have to start paying back my thousands of dollars of student loans but I didn’t care. I had a job. I would be living on my own. I was taking the world by storm. (Ok, by world I mean Cambria County, Pennsylvania.)

When the loan bills started coming in, I couldn’t afford to pay them. I was paying rent on an apartment. I had electric, gas and car insurance bills. Plus, I needed to eat. That’s important, right? Money was tight. I had been warned by college professors about the line of work I was planning to choose. I was not going to get rich as a reporter at a 106 Nielsen Designated Market Rated television station. (New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago are the top 3.)

But wait, I had an option. I could put off the payments until I was making more money. It’s a funny English word that seems like a parachute, when you are trying to make ends meet, but it malfunctions before you get to the ground. 

Deferment.

This parachute was something I was able to rely on for a few years. Each time I resubmitted the paperwork, cue the sound of a cash register, cha-ching, the interest only increased. Looking at my final student loan bill, the amount of interest I’ve paid is close to $9,000. Staggering, isn’t it? 

But there’s more to the story. I didn’t just go to post-secondary school once, I went a second time when I was in my 30’s. By this time, I was living in Virginia and had added radio to my career experience. I decided I wanted to pursue my childhood dream of becoming a weather person so in 2001, I enrolled in Mississippi State University to earn my Broadcast Meteorology Certificate. 

(Again, cue the cash register. But, in my defense, I thought getting a TV weather gig would help pay my loans off in no time. )

The program took three years. I did my course work remotely, watching lectures on VHS tapes, and submitting work via early 2000’s style email. In order to complete the program, we, my husband, our two-year-old and I, had to drive to Birmingham, Alabama in August of 2004 to take the final exam. I was eight months pregnant with our second child. 

Here is the sad part of the story. I never used that certificate. I never got a broadcast meteorology job. A few months after our Alabama trip, my husband accepted a television job back home in Pittsburgh. We packed up our life down south and returned to the Steel City with our two babies in tow. 

I immersed myself in raising our kids, while doing radio part-time. We struggled to make my monthly student loan payments which had now accumulated and had been refinanced a couple of times. I remember I had a repayment plan that had graduated payments. They were divided in three tiers from lowest to highest. It sounded good initially but when we got to tier three, ah, that was tough. 

Luckily, we only had one student loan to worry about. But even back then, I never would have imagined it would have taken me this long to resolve this debt. But I was the first child in my family to go to college. Neither of my parents did nor my grandparents. They were not schooled in college financing and we all paid the price for it. 

As Frank Sinatra sang so poignantly , “regrets….I have a few. But then again, too few to mention.” 

Am I sorry I never got my meteorology job? Yes, but then I would have missed out on all of the time I was able to spend with my baby girl. Am I sorry I did use my communication degree to its full capacity? Yes, but then I would have missed raising our family back home.

My mistakes have translated into better decisions in pursuing post-secondary education for our son. I have made it my mission to keep my kids from being bogged down in decades of loan payments. I sound like a broken record around our house but I don’t care. I did not suffer this cross in vain. I will make a better path for them. 

My final loan payment was a bit anticlimactic. Due to online bill pay, with a couple of clicks that was it. But I intend to frame my final bill. I intend to rejoice in the freedom of being unshackled from this loan that has been my shadow for the past 25 years.  

Who knows, maybe one day I’ll dust off that certificate and deliver your morning forecast. But until then I hope your day is partly sunny with a chance of happy.