Shopping With Dad

Deb: Today, as is our habit, I was grocery shopping with my dad. Several times during our shop together he said, “You should write about this,” making a joke, of course, but kinda meaning it too. So....

Shopping with my dad.

My dad is 85-years-old. He likes to go shopping. When he was younger he was a gourmet chef. He would prepare wonderful meals for us all the time. I grew up enjoying baked Alaska flamed at the table. We had large profiterole trees at Christmas, filled with fresh cream, caramel dripping from its rounded branches. Beef Wellington adorned with pastry autumnal leaves would appear at a dinner party or Dad would cook an entire pig on a spit for a neighbour’s bbq. Gourmet Magazine was his bible. Dad actually guested on many local cooking shows.

Dad is in the chef's cap with my Uncle Don! 

Dad is on the right. Our friend Murray is on the left looking on.

He does not love to cook anymore. Cooking, his lifetime hobby, is now a chore.

I can remember watching him sit with my baby brother on his lap while he read cookbooks to him, putting so much expression and passion into them, you would have thought he was reading Robert Munch or Huckleberry Finn.

Cooking, next to my Mom, has been his lifelong passion and hobby. So despite what a painful and empty chore it has become of late, old habits die hard, and when Dad is in the market he loves looking at the beautiful foods. My favourite moments are spent watching him stand at the meat counter and reminiscing. Actually bloody well reminiscing about meals gone by and cuts of beef my mother used to eat and now doesn’t!!!  He loves to describe what he would do with a pork loin or a beef tenderloin and what the side dishes would be. And of course, no weekly shopping trip would be complete without our ritual of talking about the mustards and how they only come in squeeze bottles and how he sprayed the entire kitchen when he was trying to get mustard out of the squeezy bottle. He also falls into despair when considering the new liquid detergent!  “Why? Why?” says my dad. And my favourite of all, uttered every five minutes is, “This store is starting to tick me off!” sprinkled with a few, “Boy, that’s gone up!” as he scans the prices. My dad can forgive anything except bad overpriced produce!

But he loves it. Loves the outing. Loves the connection to his old life. He may not want to cook it when he gets home, but he sure wants to step into the nucleus of it again. He wants to go back to a time when shopping and golf were his exquisite passions. The grocery store can take him there in an instant and he comes alive savoring every second. I swear to you, I watch him as we shop and I can only compare him to a retired athlete running onto the field again for another toss of the pigskin. The difference is, my dad is wondering how to turn the pigskin into a savoury appetizer. In his day he would get up on a Saturday and go to the St. Lawrence Market and he would know and chat with every vendor about their wares. He would choose his cheeses and meats and breads with loving care.

And he still is. He is doing it as much as he can. Every aisle we go down he says, “I need to find a nibble for your mother, something she might love to have.” Although it is a packaged bag of caramels or muffins, he is still putting the thought into it. He is still playing out that role. He is doing the best with his skills and, even if the menu is wieners and beans, he is still trying to impress my mother, still trying to make her happy. And when he cooks for her, she still tells him she loves it, wieners, beans and all.

Today when we wound our way to our parking spot, slowly but surely, Dad said, “My pants are falling down,” and damned if they weren’t. I hitched up the back of Dad’s pants as we pushed the cart to the car door. He laughed and said, “You should write about this.”

Barbara: I knew this was going to be a killer post, Deb, and it is. In every sense of the word: kills with its sentiment, with the nostalgia of something lost (or going), kills with the sheer and utter love. As many of you might know, I’m not around right now—off on holiday with my husband—and I haven’t had a chance to read all your amazing comments and thoughts and dreams. I am looking forward to a quiet moment when I get home to really savour them. But this post, Deb, took me to another place, both for the memories it evoked in my own experience, and for the tenacity and spirit with which you guys navigate this new world of “different”. Chef’s hat off to you and your dad.

London Diary, Day Seven: This Time It's Personal

Deb: I have a dear friend whom I have known since 1990 when I started with the Second City in Toronto. She was the producer of the theatre and therefore my boss, but we have over the years developed a wonderful friendship of love and trust. It was a road fraught with construction signs and detours given the status issues we needed to overcome, but we came to it, as humans often do, through adversity and the bond of something more.

The “more” was our struggle to become mothers. We wanted it so badly and we were united in the fact that we knew that neither of us could be truly happy until that happened. And it did. For her twice, and for me, once. We celebrated the birth of our babies knowing all too well that it could easily not have happened for either of us.

Today in London I was lucky enough to spend a full day with her eldest, the lovely Kaitlyn. Just a few years older than the boy, she works here doing a fabulous job that will help make her resume sing! The best part is, she loves both the job and London. We certainly share that view and we yakked about our London Love all the way in the cab like we were mooning over the latest boy band.

Our time together today was as the English say––brilliant. She came to a taping of Colin’s show  “Our Life In Your Hands” and said what any dutiful young woman would say, “Colin is the best.” Bless her wise little heart. I will not question Kaitlyn’s taste as she has clearly developed into a sage young woman!!!!

After the taping, she and I were off to a wonderful Indian restaurant for dinner. Colin had a second show to do but we blew it off in the name of hunger and thirst. We arrived at the restaurant. Let’s just say we talked. And talked. And laughed. And talked.

I remember her as a tot, toddler, young girl and lady, but tonight I had dinner with the woman. She is poised, charming, warm and is  perched on the brink of her very exciting life. Living it and dreaming it, all at the same time. I am happy and proud for her and I am so proud of my friend for what she and her husband have wrought.

I did not know what to expect. I wondered if we would be awkward given our history. I worried that it would be all question and answer by rote given the difference in our ages. But it was fun and I learned about her and from her. I hope she felt the same. I did not dare think it would be this lovely.

In the end it reminded me that each generation is exactly the same. We are thankful to our parents and the gifts that they give, and then we move on to make our own mark, our own mistakes. Afterwards we must stand alone to cheer our own triumphs. She and I talked about the fact that, although we all know we will turn into our parents, as we get older we lament it less and less. In fact sometimes we want it!  Wise words from a twenty-something. She has the world at her feet, this girl. And it reminded me that we all do. No matter our age or station or stage in life, we all do.

Kaitlyn and I wanted a photo before saying goodnight. We stopped a passerby who not only offered to take it, but moved us to a better light to try and make it nice for us. As he walked away, Kaitlyn said, "That's London!" Yep, it is!

This was a special night for me. Kaitlyn said to me as we hugged goodbye, “I needed to be Mothered tonight”. I am glad I could give her an eye-drop of mothering on behalf of my dear friend Sally who loves and misses her girl from across the pond. I will never forget this sweet little night. I hope Kaitlyn doesn’t either. 

“Like No Time Has Passed”

Barbara: Is that a midlife thing? Running into old acquaintances or meeting up with old friends and standing back and marveling that “it’s as if no time has passed at all”? Or do we all find ourselves doing that?

Well, I can say this for myself: I hear these words coming out of my mouth a lot more now than when I was in my twenties!

But it also really feels like it could be part of the whole space/time continuum thing, you know? That no time has passed. That we’re living everything simultaneously.

Just this weekend, dear college friends who we haven’t seen in at least a decade decided to heed the call of friendship and drive 4 hours so we four could catch up. It was long overdue. No one felt guilty about it, but we all knew it was time to turn back some time.

 We hadn’t been together for more than five minutes before each of us broke into huge grins and announced that, you guessed it, “no time had passed”. We were chatting and laughing and reminiscing and cracking jokes (well, the guys were … as you know, I’m no quipster). And even though of course we looked different, we didn’t look at all different, you know what I mean? Like it was the same gang as 25 years ago, with the same attitudes, wearing the same clothes (I mean, that was the 80s, but I don’t remember any of us rocking shoulder pads or Flock of Seagulls hairdos back then), even looking the same age. It was as if those rose-coloured glasses you always hear about had just popped on and all we could see was our mutual––youthful––love and affection.

Okay, Dave probably had more hair back then. And Phil too. Come to think of it, I probably did too...

Of course, after so much actual time having passed (after all, there are grown children to prove it), there was a lotta catching up to do. Some of it was the “laundry list” of “we lived there then there then here”, and some of it was the major brush strokes, “I did this then that and a little of the other”, and there was definitely some “this was a dark time” and “that was life-changing”. But there was just so much just … hanging out, being silly and laughing like we always did, like it was a Saturday night during the college years, us mawing down at the local Chinese restaurant and scrounging our pennies together to see if we could afford a beer to wash it down.

Thanks, my dear friends Dave and Nancy, for taking the time to visit and for reminding me that as fast as time seems to fly, it can also stand still and marvel.

Deb: This is splendid, Barb, really. What a great and rewarding experience that must have been for you guys. I have a dear friend. Let’s just call her Carol Ann, for that is her name. She and I were friends as little girls and then remained friends through high school and then lost touch. There was never a falling out or even a lack of interest. We just fell away from each other. Over these last ten years, through a series of circumstances and mutual friends, we came together again. And the time I spend with her online and face to face is so special, so connected, that I shake my head with wonder that it wasn’t always thus.