Wassail

To start off, take a small packet of vitamin C powder and pour it into a ceramic cup, not a big one, but one just big enough to fit comfortably in your hands. Next, take a packet of instant apple cider mix and pour it in the same cup, but don’t add hot water yet. Mix the cider and vitamin C thoroughly with one half of all steel chopstick pair that has long since lost its twin. Mix it until both the powders are blended and appear the same, since the vitamin C powder is paler in color in comparison to the cider. While that is wonderfully mixed, boil water until the water burbles and bubbles like an exotic hot spring. Once that water is steaming and piping hot, get ready.

Pour the hot water into the cup with the cider and vitamin C, but only a little bit. The vitamin C powder will then fizz and hiss and start bubbling and rising, so just put in enough to dissolve the powder, about a centimeter full of hot water. Mix with the twin less chopstick.

After the vitamin C is all dissolved and no longer fizzing, slowly add in more water, but keep an eye on your powder. It will still fizz some. Then again, it might not. Depends on what kind of vitamin c powder you used.

As you keep mixing with the chopstick, breathe in the citrusy sweetness of what is basically bootleg wassail. Keep on mixing, until all the powder is gone, and what you’re left with is a warm drink. You can see the tiniest of bubbles percolate in the sweet beverage.

It’s a rich honey gold color, cloudy slightly as you replace the chopstick with a cinnamon stick and add in the teeniest amount of apple flavored whiskey.

You don’t drink alcohol much, not like you used to. But you don’t mind the soft fuzziness it leaves in your head, or the warmth that spreads from your throat to your stomach. However, the bitterness of both vitamin C and the whiskey perfectly enhances the sweetness of the instant apple cider.

Take a breath, a nice deep breath. Taste the wealth that wafts from the steam of the bootleg wassail. The aroma is both sweet, acidic and smooth. Never knew a smell can be described as smooth.

The drink finally cooled to a tolerable temperature. And you take a sip.

NO...

I take a sip. I savor the taste of the false wassail. The warmth flows down from my throat, down to my stomach, soothing the crunchy feeling in my lungs. the vitamin C was sharp and bitter as a faint aftertaste. But I don’t mind. It actually tastes good.

There is a lightness after I drink. Its not caused by the contents of my beverage, but from the emotion I feel. The warmth, the fuzziness. I smile as I let my body feel like its floating, weightless from the pleasing warmth.

And as I drink, I think about the meager amount of money I scrimped and saved in my youth, and my young body heading to a bookstore to buy some comics for my little brothers.

I think about warm cider, and walking in a park, gently inhaling the sweet scent of rotting leaves, crisp air that lacks stagnancy, and the faint breath of winter that is peeking around the proverbial corner.

I think about the smell of an old cast iron woodstove, snapping and popping and wafting heat. And on that stove is a cast iron pot, bubbling and burbling with thick homemade chili, warm in taste and temperature. I think about the warm, fluffy frybread made from frozen dinner roll dough.

The more I drink, and the more of the bitterness seeps on through the sweetness, I cannot help but wonder....

Is how it feels,

To be in love?