It seems that I owe my dad an apology…sort of. In a fit of morbid curiousity, I googled “cabbage muffins,” and found an actual recipe for such a thing.
Not that I intend to try baking it, nor recommend that the Reading Public do so. The trauma has yet to be wiped from my memory. But apparently, it isn’t as off-the-wall as I thought.
Happy *coughcough*-th birthday to my dad, and thanks for timing it so conveniently!
Parents teach us a lot, and not always what they intend. For example, my dad started teaching me how to play chess when I was in preschool. One day, he took me into a game and hobby store to look at chess sets. He set me down on the counter, and while he was looking, the clerk brought out a knight from one of the expensive chess sets, held it out to me, and said, “See the horsie?” I looked right back at him and said “It’s a knight. It moves like an ‘L’.” And instead of reprimanding smartass little me, my dad laughed, and has told that story for nigh on thirty years…and that taught me that you can get away with an awful lot, if you’re funny when you do it.
Dad taught me how to cook…and how not to cook. He taught me to seek out and enjoy weird fruits and vegetables. He taught me to always label the food fridge and the lab fridge clearly and prominently. He taught me that “not all experiments are successful,” but that’s no reason not to experiment. He taught me more than I’ll probably ever need to know about patents. He never did manage to teach me how to balance equations for my chemistry class, but that probably had more to do with me than him. Dad taught me not to give up, even if you aren’t sure what the hell you’re doing; effort counts for a lot. He especially taught me not to give up on family—and that nobody drives you crazy like your parents. Dad has passed on to me choice bits of duct tape-fu, and taught me that a multitool is a beautiful thing. Dad taught me to scrounge, jury-rig, and substitute in order to get the job done. Dad taught me puns, jokes, pranks, and how to tell a good story.
Thanks, Dad.
I know I said I wasn’t making plans for Thanksgiving. And I’m not. But as it happens, Thursday is my dad’s birthday, and what kind of adoring daughter would I be if I didn’t make an effort to do something nice for him…say, a nice, home-cooked celebratory dinner; maybe something seasonal? I haven’t got a menu yet, but I’m thinking about a few things that have worked well in the past.
Occasionally, my dad gets it into his head to remind me that he doesn’t have any grandchildren. Usually, I simply look at him and tell him to give up hope or I’ll have to buy him a puppy. So, when Ed emailed me today and told me that he bought a family membership to the zoo and put down that we had three kids under 21 (so that we can take our niece and nephews), I was thrilled to be able to email my parents and announce the arrival of virtual grandchildren. That’s as far as it goes, although I am tempted to run a name-the-virtual-kids contest.
UPDATE
Mom’s reaction to virtual grandchildren:
Mom: That’s OK if you teach them how to behave!
Me: You know that I can’t stand badly-behaved children, virtual or otherwise.
Mom: If they don’t behave when you take them to the zoo, you can always leave them there.
Dad’s reaction to virtual grandchildren:
Dad: Reminder: send addresses for yourself and Ari to [your cousin]
I’m not the only one who’s out of character this week, apparently. Last weekend, my dad had asked me about yoga classes at the gym we both go to. I told him that the beginner-level class was at 5:45 on Fridays, and enthused about it wildly for a few minutes. I even loaned him my spare yoga mat. (Technically, it’s a Pilates mat, but they are more or less interchangeable.) And I said to myself, I wonder if he’ll actually show up. Unlike a lot of people, I think he’s gotten more mentally flexible as he’s aged…or maybe he’s just letting himself relax more. Anyway, I gave it even odds that he’d be there. He’s full of surprises.
When I got to class, he was already there, talking to the instructor. Go, Dad, I thought. So we spread out our mats and few more people wandered in and did likewise before the class started. “Pretty easy so far,” he observed, joking. “It’s about to get easier,” I told him, knowing that each class starts with us lying down on our mats, like kindergarteners at naptime. I didn’t tell him that it was going to be harder later.
Personally, I had a fairly good class, despite the fact that I’ve got a minor cold which can make inversions rather uncomfortable. My balance was on; good enough for me to get through about half the class with eyes closed. Every once in a while, I’d peek over at Dad. He did spend about half the class watching, with a “she wants me to do what?” look that you see on many first-timers’ faces. But for a novice in his mid-60s, he didn’t do too badly. And when I saw him on my way out, I asked if he planned to come back next week. “Probably,” he said.
Go, Dad!
My dad, for whatever reason, has it fixed in his head that I am “the responsible one” and my brother is…flaky, for lack of a better word. Personally, I think this is both inaccurate and unfair. My brother is perfectly responsible; he just has different priorities, and doesn’t think like other people. (He’s one of the orange sheep.) And being “the responsible one” is no fun, let me tell you. Do something stupid and you catch twice as much flak as “the ditz” because people expect you to know better. It was with this in mind that I finally turned the tables on Dad one day.
“You’d better be nice to me,” I warned him, “or I’ll let Ari choose your nursing home.”
I wouldn’t print this recipe even if I had it. If the gods are kind, it is lost forever.
So, a couple of years ago, my mom was visiting my grandmother in upstate New York, leaving my dad free to experiment in the kitchen. My dad likes to cook…and more often than not, his experiments turn out fairly well. He’d been on a banana bread kick, and made a few different versions with bits of dried papaya, mango, pineapple, and coconut. I should have known that things were too good to last.
A few days into my mom’s absence, he called me up and said he had something for me to try. I picked up the items in question on my way to work, and they looked like perfectly innocent banana-bread muffins. Throwing caution to the wind, I hadn’t bothered with a backup plan for breakfast. When I got to work, I was ready for a fruit-filled treat.
What I got was one of the absolute worst things I’ve ever tasted. I couldn’t even identify what was wrong. A closer inspection revealed pale-green flecks in the muffin. They couldn’t possibly have gone bad, I thought. He made them last night. Unable to contain my morbid curiousity, I called my dad and asked him what he’d put in the muffins.
“Cabbage. What did you think?” he asked.
“I think that if I weren’t over thirty, they’d constitute child abuse.”
“Not all experiments are successful,” he offered by way of explanation. Then, he told me that he had intent to freeze the remainder of the batch. I contemplated asking him “To what nefarious end?” but decided I’d already been sufficiently tactless.
However, being the dutiful daughter that I am, I felt compelled to warn my mom. I called her at my grandmother’s house that night. “When you get home, if you see something in the freezer that looks like banana bread muffins, whatever you do, don’t eat them. Throw them out,” I suggested.
“What are they?”
“Cabbage muffins.”
Pause.
“Did you say cabbage muffins?”
“Cabbage muffins,” I confirmed.
“What was he thinking?” Mom wondered.
Personally, I’d been wondering the same thing. Then, I decided that I did not want to know what could possibly have made cabbage muffins sound like a good idea. Mom allowed as how perhaps ignorance was indeed bliss in this case.
Dad never did explain his motivation…but he hasn’t attempted cabbage muffins again, either.
Yesterday, I came home to one of my dad’s brief yet cryptic phone messages. When he asks me to call him back, it can be about anything from surplus blueberries to a wetware hardware problem. This time, it was neither. He asked about my availability to write up some marketing material for him, and I told him that I didn’t have very much time. Then, he started talking about a new project that “we” might take on. In fact, he used the word “we” an awful lot, considering that he’d gotten my resignation letter less than a week ago. I confirmed that he had, indeed, received the letter. Granted, I had allowed for the possibility of work at an hourly rate in the future, but I explained that was primarily intended to cover real emergencies. (Real emergencies do not include a user’s inability to use Windows Explorer, but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.) And while I was willing to consider a limited amount of hourly work, there would be preconditions. Finally, I told him that I’ve spent so much time working on other people’s projects that I haven’t had any time to work on my own stuff in the past few years—hence the reasoning behind my resignation. He took it very well indeed—I was impressed.
Then he asked me to bring in the mail for a couple of days while he’s out of town.
No problem, I said. And you know, it really isn’t.
After nearly a month of procrastination, I turned in my resignation to my dad–retroactive to the first of the month. I actually chickened out and had my mom take it home with her one afternoon rather than delivering it personally, but it’s done. All that’s left is cleaning out my desk and turning in my key. I haven’t heard anything back from him about it, but I haven’t been called in to deal with anything, either. I feel much better now.
I got another “I need” phone call from my dad last night. He needed to find some documents. Fine. I told him where they were. I did not tell him where he could put them.
Then, he needed me to come in tomorrow (which would now be today). Even when it felt like I was spending half my life at the lab, Thursday nights were always booked. Have been for years. Thursday night is Game Night…even when it’s not, if you get my drift. He knows this. He’s been reminded. And nobody is in a garbage bag in the woods. Yet.
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