Pepper Salter Edmiston had given birth to her last child, her seventh, when she decided to take up the hobby. It started with a cookie jar in the shape of a plump woman in a vintage bathing suit, looking skyward as she nibbled on a treat.
Then came the Santa Clauses, Humpty Dumptys, cats and dogs. Portly monks, mischievous monkeys, witches and angels.
“I started buying cookie jars because they were like babies and I could carry them around,” she explained.
She searched high and low for new ceramic treasures, scouting out thrift stores, boutique shops and eBay. In all, her collection would reach more than 250, enough to fill the extra shelving that she had installed in her ocean view home when it was built in 1990.
Then the fire last month destroyed nearly everything inside the house: the handwritten letters from Ms. Edmiston’s father, who was once the mayor of Beverly Hills; a tin menorah that her ancestors brought from Russia and Poland; and, of course, nearly all the cookie jars.
Her family remains heartbroken over losing their connection to Ms. Edmiston’s oldest son, David, who died at 35 after suffering severe impacts from radiation for cancer treatment. “He breathed his last breath in that house,” she said.
On a living room shelf in her temporary home in Santa Monica, two cookie jars remain. One, a boy dressed in a pink train conductor’s uniform; the other, a Scottish child with an umbrella and plaid pants.
Neither was among Ms. Edmiston favorites, and they had been left outside on wrought-iron shelving. But that made it possible for her youngest son, Charlie, to grab them after the fire had already begun to burn their house.
Ms. Edmiston has declined offers from loved ones to return the cookie jars she has given them over the years. She has no plans to restart her collection. The two surviving jars on her shelf are enough, she said, to make her smile.
“How could I not? That was the thing about cookie jars — they made everyone happy. What’s not to like?”
— Soumya Karlamangla
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
