Comfort Food

I think when I am very old (which I plan on being one day) I will look back on my life and find that every scary, shaky, too emotional moment was addressed with increasing resilience and comfort food. Everyone has something that they consider comfort food, and many people have different foods for different levels of crises.  Sometimes I need want Fritos with onion dip, sometimes a Payday bar will soothe me. I like macaroni and cheese and rice pudding as much as most people, but when I am in need of serious comfort, I turn to Chinese shrimp and lobster sauce with pork fried rice. I can’t remember a time when this wasn’t what I craved when I was at my worst. When I am sick, almost no matter how sick, I will make myself a pot of chicken soup, but when it’s my heart or soul hurting I get on the phone and have my comfort delivered in cardboard containers. Or that’s how it used to arrive, now it comes sad plastic containers.

Take-out Chinese food has been a constant in my life, and I still turn to it when I am too tired to cook, or don’t manage to get to the store. I rarely order shrimp with lobster sauce, that is for emergency purposes only, and though it’s never as good as I remember it being, when it’s in a bowl, poured over fried rice it calms me in the most primal way.  I close my eyes and spoon this mess into my mouth and I am a little girl and there are people who will fix everything for me. When I open my eyes I return to reality and I am standing alone in my kitchen, holding my blue bowl, eating lousy food, and hoping for something magical to happen.

I am aware that searching for comfort in my blue bowl is folly. I know that before I am even done eating, whatever I am seeking relief from will wash over me. I will have the same problems and challenges, I will be alone in my kitchen, and this knowledge will not keep me from doing it again. Shrimp and lobster sauce with fried rice is my default response to trouble; it is my pacifier, my blankie, the big hug no one is near enough to give me, it is my nursery food. When I was little we had take out Chinese most Sunday nights.  Even before I could read the menu I’d sit with my dad talking about what we wanted to order, then he’d call and go to the restaurant to pick it up. Shrimp and lobster sauce may have been one of our regular dishes.

In the past few weeks I find myself facing one of those problems that feels too big for me. I cannot contain it, or my feelings about it. I am calm, I am crazed, I am sure everything will be OK, and I go over and over every possible thing that can go wrong. Last week I made my own shrimp and lobster sauce, and it was so much better than bland take-out, but strangely not as comforting. As big and overwhelming as things feel to me right now, I am surrounded by people offering to help me carry my fears, and hold me actually and virtually. It seems my comfort is coming from everywhere but my blue bowl.

I would like to greet every challenge I face with grace and self-possession. Perhaps I’ll get there in another lifetime or two. In the meantime I am grateful not only to have food in my bowl, but for the love and comfort being delivered to me daily that is what is truly nourishing me.