Cookies for Forgiveness

My blowup was half-baked. The apology wasn't

- Jaime Lewis

L ST WEEK, FROZEN cookie dough saved me from myself. It all started when the new neighbor across the street backed a U-Haul truck up to his house, walked a Ping-Pong table down the ramp and left it on his front lawn. He is a college student, and if you live in a college town, you understand that a Ping-Pong table on a front lawn is not just a PingPong table. It's a beer-pong table.

For those unfamiliar, beer pong involves bouncing balls into an opponent's cup of beer, thereby forcing that person to drink its contents. I wouldn't know the first thing about it if I hadn't spent years living on the other side of town, closer to the university, where beer-pong tables riddle front yards. At the time, my husband and I shared a property line with 27 students, the sounds of beer pong extending late into the night and early into the morning, accompanied by thumping bass lines.

To call it a drinking game implies a beginning and an end. These students embraced beer pong as a lifestyle.

The best we could do was move to a quieter part of town, which we did at great expense. And now, here was this guy, depositing a new beer-pong table within full view of my new kitchen window.

I come from a long line of angry folks, and I have always hoped that I'd be the one to change. I go to therapy.

I meditate. I journal, forest-bathe and smudge. These have helped soften the rage I inherited, but it's still in there, like lava bubbling inside a dormant volcano.

Occasionally, the lava boils over and I say something I regret. The best way I know to repair the damage is with food.