A modest delivery
I sent six gingersnaps next door because six was what would fit without stacking. The tin had once held sewing things, then buttons, then nothing useful. After a thorough cleaning it had returned to its original profession. I left it with a note saying there was no hurry to bring it back. Three days later it appeared on my doorstep containing four shortbread fingers and a note apologizing for the delay.
An unofficial arrangement
After that, the tin developed a social life. It carried oatmeal cookies in one direction and lemon biscuits in the other. Once it returned empty but with a handwritten recommendation for a book. That seemed a perfectly fair exchange. We never arranged a schedule. Sometimes weeks passed. Sometimes a knock at the door interrupted a grey afternoon at exactly the right moment. The tin acquired a small dent, which both of us pretended not to notice.
The thing inside the thing
When my neighbor moved, she brought the tin over herself. Inside were two cookies and the original note, folded into a tiny square. “No hurry,” she said. We laughed because neither of us knew what else to do. I still have it. Occasionally I fill it and take it across the landing to someone new. A tin is a useful object: it keeps a cookie from breaking, and gives you a reasonably convincing excuse to knock.
