Night Owl Cards

  For years, the phrase "mother's cookies" meant to me exactly that: the cookies my mom baked. In fact, I would have looked at you oddly if you said, "mother's cookies." Why the need to be so formal? Nobody calls her "mother." She's mom! Mother's cookies -- or Mom's cookies -- makes me think of all the cookies my mom made, those ones I'll never have again. Like most kids, I think my mom made the best cookies and nobody else's mom could come close. She didn't make anything exotic, but what she made tasted better than anything else: the best chocolate-chip cookies, the best peanut butter cookies, at Christmas time, the best cream-cheese cookies. It's rude but it's true, sometimes I'd go over to a friend's house and have one of their mom's cookies and I'd want to spit it out: "these aren't mom's cookies!"   I've lived on the East Coast all my life, so I knew nothing about the Calif...