Chicken Soup For the Sad Girl in Seattle's Soul

The food that your mother gives you the morning you drive away and leave home for the first time to set out on your own in a new city will taste different than any other food you will ever taste. Is it a combination of the way it was hastily and tearily packed and offered and what it seems to symbolize: the desire to continue to care for you, to protect and nourish you. It's been 27 years since she gave birth to you, but does the bag of grapes she washed and put into a baggie for you come as close as you'll ever know to what it was like to be connected by your umbilical cord and fed by her directly? I guess they're just grapes after all, but having them in the hotel that first night made me feel loved more than anything else I can remember in a long time.