Cooking for someone is a way of saying “I want you to be okay” without making it weird.

Saying out loud that you care about somebody is hard at any age, so people route it through objects and tasks instead. A plate put in front of you carries the whole message without anyone having to be sincere in words: I thought about you being hungry and I did something about it. That is why food appears whenever something hard has happened and nobody knows what to say.

Use the same channel this week. Make something simple for one person, even toast at an odd hour. You do not have to explain what it means for it to land.