comfort food

Today is a day that food should be a comfort and isn't. My mom was a cook, not a chef, and most of the time a baker, not a cook. She canned all summer long on our farm and we would eat tons of blackberry jam and spiced peaches throughout the year sometimes folded into a pastry or cake, all based on her summer efforts.

I saw homemade strawberry jam in the store today in a jar like the ones my mother used for canning, and instead of being a comfort, it made my heart feel so heavy that my ribcage involuntarily expanded while I was holding my breath.

Today I am mad. I am mad at my nose, at my eyes, at my ears, at my skin, and at my taste buds. I am mad that no matter how hard I try, I cannot remember things with my entire body, with all my senses, with any of them. I cannot taste the summer air when our house filled with the thick odor of stewing fruit.

More importantly, my nose won't remember my mother's smell. It's been eight years. There was a sweater she wore to hang clothes on the line to dry in the sun. If we got stuck in the rain doing our chores or got sick, she would bundle us in it. It smelled like her-- like old ribbon-- a mix of farmhouse mustiness and sugar that seemed to constantly fill the air in our house. It would hover in the back of my throat like a ghost of better things when I was a kid.

I leaned over and kissed my mom during her funeral and the smell was gone.

When I go home to visit, the air tastes different.

I saw those jars in the grocery store and knew there is no comfort in some comfort foods.