Comfort Food

I sat down at the island counter with my siblings chowing down on corn casserole, ham, and assorted vegetables; my parents sat on the circular table next to us, and my aunts and uncles helped direct guests in and out of the kitchen while we all somehow played a unanimous game of Jackbox Trivia Murder Party 2. It was in these moments that I had a strange inkling that the food, somehow, always tasted better and felt more filling. Complemented with the jubilant laughter of my relatives, the corn casserole tasted more rich, more creamy than any other I’d eaten when I was not surrounded by the people I cherished. The roasted ham tasted more smokey and was more tender when I was reminded of all of the joyrides my cousins and I took around Tampa, Florida, with no final destination, simply for the reasons of wanting to roll the windows down, blast music and spend time with those who make us laugh.

I suddenly recalled that it was with those same people in that room that I spent most of my Christmases with, sitting around the fireplace of a cabin or binging pointlessly long movies at 2 a.m. We all knew they were each on the better side of two hours long, and that there would be various yawns, asynchronous blinks, and snores before the first movie was 30 minutes in, but it was a tradition we continued nonetheless — for nothing other than that vague idea of togetherness that we felt, for the sake of being able to spend that moment, awake or asleep, in each other’s presence. We maintained those traditions because they created a comfort we could always come back to, year after year, conjuring up this beautiful magic that you might call nostalgia. It was then, when I remembered all of those little moments that I smiled and went in for another bite of food. I promise you, in that instance, corn had never tasted more sweet.