Nicki Story: Christians and Lions and Cookies

I said a while back that I thought I'd share Nicki stories from time to time. Many of the stories I have are from when Nicki was little, but the one I thought about this evening was from her last few months.

I was involved in the theater department at the local community college. For the fall semester I had the position of assistant director for a production of Shaw's Androcles and the Lion. For those who are unfamiliar with the play, it's the old Aesop's fable about a slave removing a thorn from a lion's foot, only to later be saved by the grateful lion. In Shaw's version, Androcles is a Christian in early Rome and he finds himself in the Coloseum facing the lions, one of which is, of course, the one he had helped.

Nicki went with me to rehearsal several times, really enjoying the whole process. She got along great with the actors and the director, fitting in immediately with the whole group. It was nice for me, too, to have an assistant of my own.

We opened on a Friday night and I went to the opening night cast party for a while, mening that I slept late on Saturday morning. I woke up to hear rummaging through something. It took quite a while to identify the sound as being Nicki looking through a box of cookie cutters I had collected over the years. Just as I was about to get up to see what was going on, she appeared at the bedroom door.

"Mom?"

"Yes?"

(Holding out a little cookie cutter.) "Is this the only lion cookie cutter you have?"

I laughed. "Yeah. I didn't think I'd need any more than one."

She disappeared back down the hall and I decided to stay in bed for a while. She sometimes got nervous doing cooking when I was around. Finally, after I heard the mixer stop for a bit, I got up. There was Nicki, rolling out sugar cookie dough and using the little lion cookie cutter. She had lions all over the place, some on cookie sheets, ready to go into the oven; some on cooling racks, nicely browned; some already cool and stacked neatly.

She saw my puzzled look and said, "These are for you to take to the cast of the play. This way you can throw the lions to the Christians."