Today is my Dad's birthday. To celebrate this occassion I try to cook foods that were meaningful or remind me of my dad. The foods give me a way to introduce the kids to him and a way that they can have memories of him. Last year we went with his favorite meal--or so he told me weeks before he died--King crab and steak. This year I paired the meals down and made crab salads for lunch and then we went out to a new restaurant in town called Gobble. One of the few questions I asked him while we were preparing for his death was what his favorite holiday was. He paused and then said that it was Thanksgiving and so I figured that a Thanksgiving themed restaurant was the way to celebrate. The food was ehhh and on the salty side, but my dinner seemed fitting as it reminded me of the Thanksgiving dinners I ate at his home. Dinners that were okay but nothing interesting or on the cusp of culinary brilliance. I remember one Thanksgiving where he served canned peas. Shudder.
On our drive home the kids and I had a nice discussion about Grandpa John. How much he loved them and planned to take them to Disneyland and how he enjoyed taking walks through the woods with Georgia and picking vegetables in his garden. I told them how he never once turned me down for a board or card game and how he loved all animals and treated them with kindness. Theo replied, "Me miss him" and Georgia wanted to know the details of when and where he died. I didn't think I would be having a discussion about morturary's or cremation with preschoolers but it came up about where his body was now and why we can't visit him.
Theo said, "Me sad."
Me too, buddy. Me too.
Tonight we lit our Christmas lights in honor of him. Kind of like birthday candles for a man who would have been sixty eight years old.
Cheers to the man who took me golfing on Pebble Beach, taught me to drive a stick at age thirteen, and loved me so much that tears leaked from his eyes when he saw me. I love you Dad.
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