Many times I heard my father say “well .. that’s the way the cookie crumbles.” The phrase was his mantra. The crumbling cookie accepted (or dismissed) disappointments, family arguments, missed opportunities, financial problems, unwelcome surprises, friendship endings, and sadnesses.

As a teenager I often wanted my father to DO something. As I stomped and sobbed, yelled and threatened, his passivity made me louder and probably more unlikable. But he rarely raised his voice and he always loved me.

I recall being wrapped in my father’s arms as I sobbed loudly because I didn’t win first place at some Drama festival, when I was not elected School Captain in my last year at school ( I don’t know why I was perturbed as I scoffed at the position anyway), when my mother, again, forbade me something or other (he rarely intervened in our constant yelling matches). My mother’s complaints, my brothers’ pleas, family illnesses and deaths, were all met with the phrase. In a range of tones.

My father was an optimist, and a man of strong faith.

Yesterday I came across the phrase ‘May God hold you in the palm of his hand.’ I’ve always grappled with the concept of free will and self determination alongside fate or destiny. Or is there a middle ground, a life sketched roughly where there are many twists and turns, but a a life held loosely together by a framework. Where is God in all this shuffling and struggle and joy? If they know the movement of each precious individual, if they care and love, if they are powerful beyond our human imagining, where is the reason for the shit stuff that happens? If we’re all metaphorically in the palm of a hand and protected, then: Why?

Now, as I struggle yet again to answer these questions, my father’s response is a useful crutch.

The only possibility I can come up with is related to that crumble. When the whole bit falls apart it loosens rather than separates. The crumbs are still part of the whole even if a few fall to the ground. The core is still safe.

So, dad again, I can’t say it like he did , quietly and passively. But I can contemplate at times the possibility that when cookies are crumbling there is a hand holding. Maybe, hopefully, life continues in an unexpected and different way.

Life goes on.