Oh wit a sleekit horrible beastie,
Lurks in yer belly efter a feastie,
nae maiter wit u dae,
abdys gonna hiv tae pay,
even if yae try tae stiffle,
it's lyk a bullet oot a rifle,
hawd ur bum tight tae the chair,
tae try n stop the leakin air,
shimmy yersel fae cheek tae cheek,
n pray tae god it disnae reek,
Oot it comes lyk a clap o thunder,
Ricochets aroon th room,
Michty me a sonic boom!
God almichty it fairly reeks,
Hope I huvnae shit ma Breeks.
~ Robert Burns
My father lives for his next meal. Yesterday he called me from a restaurant in Florida, somewhere near his Winter home, while he was having his lunch, to tell me all about what he was eating.
"Ohhh, Dawn. You would love this place. The food is so healthy."
"What are you having, Dad?"
"Ohhhhh, I'm having a delicious bowl of tomato soup, a Caesar salad (crunch, crunch, slurp, slurp) and an iced tea. Mmmmmm, delicious."
"Sounds yummy, Dad."
"And tonight, for dinner, I'm either going with Danny and Maria to the VFW Post for fish, because it's fish night there tonight, OR I'm going to this little restaurant I found about a mile away from my house. Tonight is North Atlantic salmon night there! You get delicious salmon, a baked sweet potato and string beans! (more yummy sounds) and it includes TWO decent glasses of delicious red wine for the price of one! But, I told Danny and Maria to let me know early whether or not they're going to the VFW for the fish because I like to eat dinner between 5 and 6pm. They don't eat until 7:30 or so and I don't like that. By 7:30 I like to have my tea and my popcorn and some marshmallows as a snack. I don't like to eat later than that unless I'm out with friends and then I'll make an exception."
I like that about you, Dad. You know what you like."
"Yeah, and you know what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow? There's a little diner just down the road from me..."
He's eating his lunch, discussing his dinner and planning and dreaming about tomorrow's breakfast.
I don't know what it is about me but when people are that passionate, especially about food, I could listen forever. It's a hit of verbal valium - sort of like when I was small and my mom would doodle while she was talking on the phone. Sitting there watching her draw, through the smokey haze of her ciggie, had a very calming effect on me. Same with this.
My Dad recently had a defibrillator implanted in his chest and he ran in to some complications soon after. Sitting in the ER one night all he kept saying to my sister and I, in between doctors and nurses poking and prodding him, was -
"If they let me out of here tonight I know a great place where we can get Chinese food."
If memory serves me, he's always been this way. When I was a kid, and even now, nothing excited him more than the sound of the tea kettle whistling. He would rub his hands together and make goofy giggle-y sounds while heading in the direction of the stove.
He is a true Scotsman. His parents, Mary Adam and James Moir D'Arcy, came here on the ship named Caledonia some time in the late 1920's/early 1930's with four children in tow. They lived two doors down from us on 63rd street in Brooklyn. At four o'clock every afternoon they sat at the kitchen table and had high tea. They never used a tea bag, always fresh loose tea, and they brewed it in a silver, English teapot. There were always crackers, Dundee marmalade and Scottish shortbread. It wasn't intended to be fancy, it was simply their ritual and the only way they knew how to do it.
My Dad modernized his at-home tea ritual and downgraded to tea bags. He used two "balls" as he called them. He had a knack for calling things by names that would make us laugh and then act like he didn't know why we were laughing.
He came to meet me at work recently and I took him to the vegetarian restaurant across the street to get "sandwiches". He was totally miffed by the fact that the "meatball" sandwich had no meat in it -
"So, if it's not a meatball, what the hell is it?"
He finally ordered a smoked mozzarella and tomato panini.
"Is it mozzarella? Are they tomatoes???"
He gobbled it down with relish, not uttering another word all throughout our meal.
On our way out the door, I turned around, all smug, and said -
"Sooooooo, you liked it, huh?"
To which he replied, as he picked his teeth with a postcard announcement of a local art opening,
"Nope. I was hungry. ."
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