What’s your go-to comfort food?
School is dismissed for the day. My brother and I live 150 yards away. There’s school work and musical instrument practice to do or to say I’ve done before Dad gets home. But we just left the rigors of schoolwork only minutes ago. I need a buffer.
We enter through the backdoor and the first room we enter is the kitchen. Mom is usually there chopping something, flouring something, and/or mixing something. Aromas ignite the olfactory nerve which sets off a biological process that creates a chemical response resulting in a rumbling in my stomach cavity.
“When the stomach is empty, it contracts and produces ghrelin, a hormone that signals hunger.” 1 Scholarship haunts me even in the kitchen of my humble abode.
Who will rescue me? I don’t have to even ask. I won’t bother Mom or interfere in progress towards a truly meaningful meal with the whole family around the table minutes after Dad gets home and we are called home from our backyard play.
A tan plastic plate from the plate cupboard, a silver “everyday” butter knife from the utensils drawer make their way to the table top of our chrome and Formica kitchen table.
My brother who never truly understood the meaning of “come straight home after school” finally enters.
I go to the bread box and cease the loaf by the twisted end and toss it on the table top. A quick dash to the refrigerator made here in Evansville, Indiana, the “refrigerator capital of the world” and commandeered the jam and carried it to the center of culinary creativity.
My younger brother had already thieved my plastic plate and everyday knife and two slices of Bunny Bread from the wrapper. He was destroying a beautiful fresh white slice of Bunny Bread with his reckless and frantic attempt of spreading peanut butter from the Jiffy jar that mysteriously appeared on the table.
When he reached for the jar of jam still cradled in my hand, I spoke a phrase that is commonly used today, but in different tone and different meaning, “That’s my jam.” Nonetheless, I reluctantly left it with him when I retrace earlier steps to find the burgled tan plastic plate’s twin.
My stomach gurgles as I watch my sibling bite into his jam-dripping, peanut butter stained sandwich. By the time I complete my perfect work of culinary art. My younger roommate finishes his sloppy snack and heads outside to play up an appetite for the fine family dining Mom is working on.
Before I take one bite of this magnificently comforting PB & J delicious delight, I take a moment to admire it. Then, excitedly scarf it down.
When I am in need of a quick comfort snack, PB & J is a way to deflect hunger and reflect on a simpler past.
Categories: Sample writing
Douglas Knight
I have the rich life full of a sinner wounded by misunderstanding and punishment but blessed by mercy and forgiveness.
Knight Writer 