Remembering my dad.
This morning I was thinking about breakfast and what I’d like to eat instead of cold cereal and suddenly remembered that when I was a child, one of my dad’s favorite snack foods was bread and sugar and milk. He would tear bread into bite sized pieces, drop them into a bowl, pour on milk and sprinkle with sugar. It seems to me that he enjoyed this rather often. Usually I wasn’t tempted to have that but I did try it–but not this morning. It did taste surprisingly good, but it seemed to me to be a “Dad” thing, not for me.
Dad also liked coffee soup, which was similar to bread and milk but now with coffee. Dad liked coffee a LOT. If his coffee was too hot, sometimes he would tip a little into his saucer and sip it from the saucer. Then came the hype about coffee being in disfavor and Dad deprived himself of coffee in favor of protecting his health.
Dad liked succotash, another thing that I didn’t care for. Succotash is something that I haven’t heard mentioned for years. It’s lima beans and corn cooked and served together as one dish. He was very fond of lima beans.
And pie! Dad was especially fond of pie. He had his favorite jokes about pie. “I only like two kinds of pie,” he would say, and then playfully add, “hot and cold.” “I only turned down pie once,” he often said. “I didn’t really hear what they said that time.”
Dad had a very good appetite and he still enjoyed meals even during times of illness. We often joked in our family that we would know that Dad was really sick when he turned down food. I remember when that day came and it was no longer a joke. He was offered a cream puff, something he would have really enjoyed as a wonderful treat. I knew that he was really failing when he said he couldn’t eat the cream puff. He died about a month later.
He had lived to be 89, and had a full, rich life. He enjoyed life, –as he enjoyed his favorite foods. He used self control when eating, and lived life cautiously while enjoying the ordinary good things of every day.
Bread and milk and sugar–one of life’s simple pleasures for Dad.