I’ve been asked to write for this magazine on the topic of the wisdom of my father. One problem with that is that I never had a “father,” I had a Dad. The other problem is that I’m not sure it was wisdom. He wasn’t that deep, but he was practical. Nowadays we would probably say he was pragmatic, but he never used that word, so why should I?
With that covered, let’s get started talking about my dad’s wisdom by talking about my mom. I can’t talk about my dad without talking about my mom and, it might be odd, but I’m going to talk about my mom by talking about the eulogy I gave at her funeral. You may think it’s odd to talk about my mom by talking about her funeral, but she’d like it, and that’s what counts.
I prepared a pretty good eulogy, but I never delivered it. On the way to the funeral, we stopped and picked up my dad. While in the house, I looked around, and I saw her “recipe file,” a small Swedish-designed box of index cards. She wrote in perfect cursive. I grabbed the recipe box off the shelf, opened it, saw the recipe titles, and a lightbulb went off. My mom read cookbooks like others read novels, so I went to her bookshelf and grabbed some of her favorite reading material – Julia Child and some other gourmet cookbooks. I put the cookbooks and my mom’s recipe file in a box, and we left for her funeral.
When I spoke at the funeral, I walked up with the box filled with cultured-cuisine cookbooks and her little box of 4 x 6 index cards written in cursive. Perfect cursive. I opened the various cookbooks and read the names of the recipes. They were all fancy-sounding and hard to pronounce, with intricate techniques on how to make them taste good and look lovely. Once a year when my dad was deer hunting, she’d make one of them for us. We always looked forward to her doing it. The recipes were amazing.
I then pulled out her own recipe file and read from the cards. “Meatloaf.” “Baked chicken.” “Scalloped potatoes.” And the fanciest of them all, “Cabbage Rolls.” For fifty-two years, my mom made what my dad liked. True love and sacrifice. Old school love.
My mom was obviously a good cook, but it didn’t always turn out perfectly. My dad loved anything burnt. Show him a casserole with overdone and slightly hard cheese, and it never failed; he would say “that’s the best part!” when one of us kids would grumble. It was so weird to me that the man loved burnt stuff!
I’ve always been the cook at our house, something I got from my mom. Last year, my wife made dinner when our adult kids were home. She made some amazing main dish and a side dish that was… let’s say, “thoroughly cooked.” I saw her face as she set it on the table and I said, “if you guys don’t mind, I’d like the darker piece. That’s the best part!” She looked at me like a teenage girl that got asked to prom. Wisdom of my father?
My dad taught me a lot of things on purpose, but I think the best things he taught me just… happened. A father/son osmosis occurs in the course of life, but you don’t know it at the time. My dad turned 40 a few days after I was born. The delicate term of those days was that I was a “mistake,” but, in our family, being offended wasn’t an available option on the menu, so I thought it was great.
When I was a kid, we went to the cabin just about every weekend from April to Thanksgiving. My mom smoked Parliament 100s and my dad smoked cigars. The little wing window was the only antidote for any secondhand smoke issues. We were told it worked great and, in a loving dictatorship, kids’ attempted coups d’état were always thwarted. Claims of car sickness were met with a red and white Starlight mint from Mom or a lint-covered Lifesaver from my dad. Caring 101, 1970s style: a cracked window and an old mint.
My folks eventually retired and moved up to the cabin where they lived for twenty-five years. My mom passed away before my dad. Eventually, he moved down to the Twin Cities and lived with my sister. My job was to bring him back to the cabin from time to time. I remember our last trip up there. About halfway up, he proclaimed his desire for pancakes. I wasn’t really in the mood to stop because, at 84 years old, he used a walker and was never in a hurry anymore. But I knew we were going to stop anyway and have pancakes, and I knew his target location was the nearest small diner. My dad was no wallflower. Everybody was a potential new friend. Stopping to eat was a social event, even on a road trip. When we got into the restaurant, he immediately told me he had to go to the bathroom. I wasn’t surprised; of course he needed to go. We were at a little café in Mötley, Minnesota, and there was a line to the men’s room. I laughed seeing the guys in line. I had seen this movie before. I sat down at a table and the waitress gave me the menus. Meanwhile, my dad was making friends with the guys in line to the bathroom. I fully expected what happened next: the guys respected their elder and let him go first. He was in there a long time. Eventually he emerged, but the guys that had been in line had gone and sat down at their respective tables because the wait was so long. Once my dad was seated, they each went by and they said hi to him, because, in that wait for the bathroom, they got to know him. Genuinely got to know him. The waitress eventually came over and right away my dad proclaimed his need for pancakes. I still remember his order, “I want two pancakes and a side order of bacon, but don’t make the bacon too crispy because my teeth aren’t too good, so I’ll have two pancakes, bacon, and a plate and a knife and a fork.” I looked at him and shook my head “did you think they were just going to throw them on the table?” He shook his head and smiled, and eventually the pancakes came. We took our time chitchatting, eating breakfast at 1 PM, and, when he was fully satisfied, we left. I helped him in the truck and we headed down the road. Within moments he was clearing his throat incessantly. He had suddenly become slightly annoying and, after about the fifth throat clear, I asked him what was wrong. He said the syrup was built up in his throat and he needed… a mint.
We were kind of in the middle of nowhere at this point, but I also knew the need for a mint had now become an obsession at the next convenience store. I stopped and said, “I’ll get out and get them, you don’t have to get out.” I went in and got him some green TicTacs. I got back in the truck, handed them to him, and he was very pleased. We got back on the highway and suddenly I heard a repetitive, rhythmic sucking noise. I looked over at him and he looked at me and asked me what was wrong. I asked him what he was doing and he said, “the TicTacs are too hard and they hurt my teeth, so I’m just sucking on them.” It was like one of those moments where your spouse is slightly annoying you and for the first time ever you notice how loudly they chew. We got to the cabin and had a good four or five days there, and then it was time to head home. Halfway home, he announced to me that he was out of TicTacs and that he’d like me to stop and get some. I went into the next convenience store that we came upon and, when I came out, he asked about the TicTacs and I said they were sold out. I’m not proud to say: I lied. I couldn’t handle that sucking noise anymore. A couple hours later we got to my sister’s house and we went inside. I gave him a hug and told him I loved him and he did the same. When I got back home, as usual, I cleaned out his side of the truck because in the door were some Kleenex wrappers and various other things, and when I grabbed the Kleenex, I noticed in the bottom of the door compartment about 30 now-white TicTacs. I was slightly confused at first, and then I realized what he had done. He had sucked the green off and then stashed the bare TicTacs in the door, like a squirrel prepping for winter. I chuckled as I dug them out and threw them away.
My dad passed away before we ever got to go back to the cabin again. About a year after that trip, I was cleaning my truck so I could sell it. As I vacuumed the floor under the passenger seat, I saw it: a white TicTac that I had missed!
I can’t recall if I got choked up or if I laughed, but I grabbed the TicTac and held it in my hand and thought of the pancakes. The annoying sucking noise. The friendships he made in line to the bathroom. I thought of all the times he took me hunting and fishing and the hundreds of hockey and baseball games of mine that he never missed. I looked at the TicTac my dad had removed the green from and…I ate it. It was the best TicTac any man ever had.
I’ve had good luck ever since eating that magic mint. The lesson I learned from my father that day was to never underestimate the impact you make on other people as you live your life, and also the power of a mint.
