#this is the Grimace Bf btw! same guy

[nostalgicfun]

Love is stored in the food.

My dad always made a huge deal about my mom's cooking.

He would come to see us for the weekend and she'd make him lunch and dinner, he'd bang his fist on the table, he'd make comical MMMMMMs like he was in a commercial (albeit a very corny one), and declare that he was taking home the leftovers so nobody could have seconds (which was, of course, a joke, and he'd actually encourage everyone to eat more).

As I was growing up, if I didn't like something we were having for dinner, he'd tell me "Did I ever tell you what I ate in the Gulf War?" or "Did I ever tell you I carried one spoon for six months in my sock?" and, in a nice, fun, dad-like way, tell me I should appreciate my mom's cooking.

One of the last times I saw him, I made a joke that I could make him spaghetti, but it wouldn't be as good as my mom's because I didn't have the practice.

He told me that of course it would be just as good, because he loves me, and therefore he loves my cooking, and he would take all the leftovers home and eat all of it even if I made him weeks and weeks of spaghetti and it all turned green.

I believe him.

I got older and got my own place, and began cooking for roommates and friends and coworkers and significant others. I wasn't a very good cook because I didn't have any experience at all outside of boxed macaroni and spaghetti since my mom didn't allow me to cook—which is another story of its own.

So yes, I started cooking and baking, and no, I wasn't good at it. Many of my meals were (and, let's be real, still are) "flops." I'm notorious for burning—incinerating, truthfully—things, overcooking things, adding too much or too little seasoning, yada yada. That doesn't stop me from loving cooking and baking, though.

But there's a problem, and there has always been a problem since I started using a kitchen of my own, that what I make goes to waste. Entire cakes sit in their cake-keeper until they mold. Leftovers of dishes I made for other people turn to liquid in their containers. Brownies turn to gray rocks, spaghetti turns so green not even my dad would have touched it.

Shortly after I got my first apartment, I lamented this to my father, who was by then living overseas. I told him that I had, like my mother, love to bake, but no one to feed it to. Even with roommates, it rotted. I couldn't eat two dozen cupcakes myself.

I received a phone call a few hours later.

It was from my dad's best friend.

He drove an hour for cupcakes. I'd never seen him smile so broadly as he did when I went running out to his truck with a big container of cupcakes in my hands. They were pudding-filled, I told him, something I'd never tried before. Yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting and vanilla pudding. Boston cream cupcakes.

My dad's friend came back once a week until he moved a short time later. He posted pictures of my "delicacies" on Facebook. I made him cheesecakes, cupcakes, quick breads, muffins.

And of course, spaghetti.

And he told me about the spoons he and my dad carried in the Gulf War.

Years went by and I got better at cooking, but there was still something wrong. My food—homemade food—wasn't eaten unless I put it right in front of a person and basically said "eat." If I set my food out at a work potluck and left the room it would go untouched. My family scoffed (and still scoffs!) at anything I make for them for reasons unknown to even me. My friends and roommates ate what I put in front of them, but left overs never got eaten of their own volition, cookies continued to mold in their tins.

I stopped baking.

Later when my dad returned to the country for a funeral, he went straight to my mom's house. She made him coffee and cheesecake and spaghetti, and he raved and raved and raved about all of it just like he used to.

We stood outside that night while I let the dogs run around.

"She makes terrible coffee," he told me unprompted. "Bitter. But she always had it ready for me. I never asked for that. She just started doing it one day while I was getting ready for work. I'd never had that before. It was the sweetest thing ever, back then."

Her cheesecake was too sweet for him sometimes, too. And she made her chili, one of his favorite dishes right up there with spaghetti, too spicy for his liking.

But she was cooking for him. She was doing this for him. And his reactions made her so happy. My mom loves when people enjoy her food, everyone who's ever met her knows this. "Even when she made absolutely rancid stuff, which she does sometimes," he said, "she's doing it because she loves us. And we love her, too. So I drink the coffee."

I took up my dad's mantle of "theatrics" at the dinner table for my mom. She smiles the same every time.

I've become a much, much better cook as I've gotten older.

I've also, with age, learned the difference between selfish love and unselfish love, and how you can so easily tell this difference when you make someone food. Empty compliments made in hopes it'll win the compliment-giver brownie points (pun not intended but appreciated). Say it's good, but the leftovers are molding in the fridge and the muffins are untouched in the break room, still. My family who side-eyes my dinner contributions with thinly-veiled distaste.

I started making friends recently. New friends from new places, friends who aren't anything like me.

I joined a writing club, too.

On a whim, I baked cupcakes for our meeting.

When the meeting was over, arguments ensued over who got to take the cupcakes home. I handed out paper plates and cling wrap. Everyone left smiling. Everyone left with a cupcake (or two) in their hands. Each time we meet, now, they ask me when I'm next bringing cupcakes.

A coworker came to sit in my office the other day. She's new here. She lamented not having a Red Lobster in the area, that she craved their biscuits because she and her mom used to go get Red Lobster on Thursday nights.

I went home and made her Cheddar Bay biscuits. We sat in the break room eating them and laughing and making up stories about people we saw from the window below. When lunch was over, she took her biscuits home in an ice cream box we found in the freezer.

I started dating a new guy last year. My dad introduced us on his most recent visit. I was smitten. He was smitten. We did the silly little activities kind-of-young people do while dating: walks in the park, going out for ice cream, watching a movie, attending a trivia night.

I don't remember now how it was relevant to the conversation at the time, but at one point it was mentioned that neither his mother nor his father nor his step-mom ever cooked. The whole family always ate out. At home they'd have chicken tenders and Hungry Man dinners.

The next week, I invited him over for dinner. I was nervous, super nervous. I was so scared it would go the way it always goes, with no comments at all other than "thanks it was good," which almost always means, in the experiences I've had, "that was mediocre but nice of you I guess."

I made him a big rack of ribs. I called my mom to make sure I was doing it right, like, three times.

When I put the ribs down in front of him, he was smiling a familiar smile. A "did I ever tell you about the spoon I carried" smile.

He took one bite.

He set down his fork.

He got out his phone and video called his dad to show him the dinner.

I haven't stopped cooking for him since.

When he has to leave after a weekend together, he goes to my fridge and rummages through the leftovers not unlike a racoon and asks "can I have this?" "are you going to eat this?" "can I take some of this home?"

He always leaves with a Walmart bag full of little Tupperware containers, and hot coffee made without asking.

And when my dinners are "flops," when they come out burnt or too salty or not salty enough, he doesn't lie or give me beloathed empty compliments.

"The worst dinner from you is still better than the best dinner from Door Dash."

I bake him cakes. He sends me snapchats of him eating them. I make him muffins, and he takes them to work in a lunch box and taunts his coworkers with them. He arrives to my place in the wee hours of the morning and asks "what did you make for dinner tonight, is there any left, and how fast can I microwave it?" We go to a social potluck at the place where we met and he points to the banquet table and says "look, that guy's getting some of your meatballs. I bet they're almost all gone." A friend's wife puts one of my cookies on her plate. He points at something behind her that isn't there at all and steals the cookie off of her plate. He smiles at me.

Love is stored in the food.

#this is the Grimace Bf btw! same guy #the hardest toughest people in my life have always been the most unselfish and the most genuine #I want to write a whole analysis of that #anyway I think about this all the time and have wanted to start writing little stories so here have a little piece of me <3