As I write this, I'm very tired from baking 200+ cookies over the past 36 hours. I liked baking on Sunday, when R helped me measure and crack the eggs and shower everything with sprinkles and put away the flour and sugar and baking powder when we were done with it. Today, a Monday, I baked alone like an obsessive maniac with a rolling pin. I had my high-efficiency systems and they worked, but my industrial-baker-robot body could sure use a massage right now (with lots of oil).
Tomorrow my 11-year-old girl will sell the autumn themed cookies at her school in an effort to raise money for the Terry Fox Foundation. A cancer survivor herself, R is more inspired than usual this year because of her friend "Lara", the 12-year-old who is living with an aggressive case of osteosarcoma, which Terry Fox had as well.
They say "money can't buy happiness" but I don't think they were talking about RAISING money for charity when they said that. Fundraising for a favourite cause is actually one of life's greatest pleasures and I'm glad my kid likes doing it so much. We're also very lucky to have family and friends who can pitch in - not always a lot, but enough to help R reach her goal and make her feel like she's surrounded by people who care. She is just as thrilled to check her online donation page as she is to open an actual gift meant for her.
We know a Toronto couple who are very wealthy philanthropists. They have hospital and gallery wings named after them, not to mention a high-profile University college that bears their name. They also head a Canadian program that gives money to business startups - kind of like Dragon's Den but without the TV cameras. And without Kevin O'Leary trying to profit from any of it.
At a dinner party with these friends not long ago I watched their eyes light up as they talked about giving a million to this worthy cause and another million to that one. I listened to them recount stories of instances in which they were able to make people's dreams of starting a business come true. People who just needed $5,000 to leave their ordinary lives behind and get moving on something exciting and creative and independent and new. Some of the startup ideas were as simple as opening a bakery. But some, literally, were pursuits that might find cures for diseases in the not-too-distant future.
"We offered [the entrepreneur] $10,000 to get her idea started", S recalled, "but the woman said 'no, I don't need any more than $5,000, so I won't take a dollar more'." Clearly S was impressed by an individual who, in her own fashion, was handing money away.
Whenever I think of this wealthy couple, I have never envied their big house and their butlers and housekeepers and their horses and exotic trips (wait - maybe I would like to have a few of those things, ha ha). But what I really would love to experience is that Santa-like quality of being able to grant people what they really wish for.
I can tell you FOR SURE that these two people who spend so much time giving money away are the happiest people I have ever met on this earth.
But tomorrow will prove to be pretty exciting and happy for R and me, too. Making and selling cookies to help find a cure for cancer is hard work. But it's worth every minute. And every penny.
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