Happy Father's Day

Sigh. My third Father's Day without my father. I miss him.

Dad was... hmm. How to say it? A character? That doesn't even begin to cover it. Complicated? Oh, boy. Maddening? Often.

Frankly, he had a strong narcissistic streak, a tendency to treat his loved ones -- and everyone else -- as staff, and what can best be described as only a nodding acquaintance with the truth. (Years ago, a journalist said of Ronald Reagan, who had claimed, falsely, to be at the liberation of one of Nazi death camps, that if it was a good script, Reagan thought of it as the truth. My dad was like that. If it made him look good, or was entertaining, or would keep him out of trouble, it was the truth.) He felt he was always entitled to special privileges -- the front of the line, the best seat in the house, special service. He could drive his children nuts, and none of us blamed our mother one bit when she filed for divorce after thirty four years. Indeed, my immediate thought was "What took you so long?"

But that wasn't all of Dad. He was smart, he was funny, he could keep a whole lot of balls in the air. He was a good writer, and a terrific speaker. Much of my way with words, my love of audiences, my ability to tell a joke, and my smart-ass personality, I got from him. Along with my short waist, huge rib cage, and hair that went totally gray by the time I was forty. Thanks, Dad!

Indeed, Dad's smart-ass gene is the most dominant gene he passed on. All three of his kids got it. And man, you should meet my nine-year-old niece. The kid has been a wise-cracker with killer comic timing since the day she could speak. (Her brother's funny, too, but he's a gentler soul. He's the family musical prodigy.)

Woe betide the corporate flunky who balked my father, or the company that gave him bad service. Dad was never quite so much in his element as when he was threatening his way through the chain of command, demanding his money back, or that the insurance company pay what they owed, or that the airline give him the deal they'd advertised. Whatever. My sibs and I have long referred to getting up in the faces of people who really, really need it as "channeling Dad." He knew it, too. He eventually started referring to this talent of his as "channeling myself."

Dad could make doing every day things seem like an adventure. Going to the pet store, washing the car, driving through the hotel parking lot -- no matter how prosaic the activity, Dad could make it into an occasion. He read us Kipling's Jungle Book. He taught us to mat surf, and to play skee ball. He could do baffling card tricks, and carve his initials in his thumb, quite convincingly, and then, of course, have no cuts to show. I still have no idea how he did that.

When I was a socially awkward fourteen year old, Dad sponsored a girl's soft ball team, to try to help me find a social circle. That I had no aptitude for the game was not his fault. He was there for every practice, every game. When I was in a one-act play in Junior High, I looked out into the audience to see my father, in his business suit, having taken off from the office in downtown Manhattan to see my show.

Dad was the Master of the Concise Phone Call. He would call, tell the latest joke, or ask a question,("What's a blog?"), then ring off. I could do the same with him. I never hesitated to pick up the phone to call him, because I knew I didn't have to block out forty-five minutes. So I called him a lot. At his funeral, my cousins mentioned this, too -- that Dad would call them up, tell them a joke, and get off the phone. They also marveled that he would remember all sorts of details about their lives that they'd mentioned in passing months before.

And if you were one of his own, there was nothing Dad wouldn't do for you when the chips were down, from "channeling himself" to handing you his credit card.

Dad was also a control freak. He planned his own funeral out in great detail, from which church he wanted it in (the one in his home town of New Brunswick NJ, of course, with the family names on the stained glass windows) to the hymns, including a truly unsingable one with lyrics by Rudyard Kipling, to the Navy Honor Guard and the Dixieland jazz band at the graveside. We did it all. The Navy will be supplying the headstone eventually, with his name, rank, and dates, plus one line of text. The problem is, we haven't decided on the line of text. So far, the front-runner is "Let me speak to your supervisor."

So what does any of this have to do with nutrition, much less low carbohydrate nutrition? Sheesh, can't a girl just wax nostalgic now and then? Oh, all right. I'll make a connection.

Dad thought of himself as a really adventurous, cool guy. He had his private pilot's license; he rode a motorcycle. He had an, uh, active social life. (If you're thinking this factored into my mother divorcing him, you are correct.)

But the truth is, Dad was one of the least adventurous people I've known. He liked what he liked, and he wanted everything the same, forever and ever, amen. Every summer, we went to the same motel at the same town on the Jersey Shore he'd gone to growing up. Every Thanksgiving and every Christmas, we had to do things just the same way. He listened to the same old singers sing the same old songs, over and over again; heaven forbid he should listen to somebody new. He defended this with "You can't understand anything they're saying" -- referring to any vocalist more modern than Frank Sinatra or Billie Holiday -- but the truth was, he wasn't comfortable trying anything new. (His last Father's Day, I sent him a CD I knew he'd love , if he'd only listen to it. After he died, I found it in his den, still in the shrink wrap. It made me sad.)

This lack of adventurousness extended to food. Dad had the eating habits of a picky five year old. He wanted his grilled chicken with no barbecue sauce, and his meatloaf from the same recipe my mother had made for the whole thirty four years they were married. In the forty eight years I knew him, I never saw him eat a salad, nor any raw vegetable. There were three cooked vegetables he would eat: Chopped spinach, carrots, and green beans -- but only French cut, not cross cut. And he wanted them with butter. Just butter. Well, maybe almonds on the green beans. But nothing more interesting. Nothing he hadn't had by the time he was ten.

Growing up, we ate the same dozen or so meals over and over again, on the nights my father made it home for dinner: Steak, baked potatoes, and spinach. Plain roasted chicken, rice, and green beans. Spam and macaroni and cheese. Meat loaf, baked potatoes, and cooked carrots. Roast lamb, pan-roasted potatoes, and one of the Three Acceptable Vegetables. Spaghetti with meatballs, Mom's homemade sauce, and garlic bread. Over and over again.

My mother told the story of them being in Mexico City for a convention, and going out to one of the city's best restaurants. Knowing that Chicken Mole Poblano was the national dish of Mexico, Mom decided to try it. When the waiter had taken their order and left, my father, who had ordered steak again, looked at her aghast and said, "How can you order that? You've never had it before! How do you know you'll like it?"

After Dad started living on his own, his nutritional habits took a dive. Sixteen years ago, he had major surgery after a couple of years of gut trouble stemming from colon cancer surgery. He spent a month in the hospital, and by the time he got out he'd lost forty five pounds. I went to New York City, where he lived, picked him up from the hospital, and took care of him for a few days until he was strong enough to get himself a glass of milk, and be sure he wouldn't fall getting to the bathroom.

The next year, he came to our house for Thanksgiving. I asked him how he'd been recovering. He said he felt okay, but wasn't getting his energy back the way he thought he should. Being me, I asked him what he was eating. "A powdered sugar donut and a glass of milk for breakfast, a York Peppermint Patty for lunch, and a Hot Pocket for dinner." "Um, Dad? You're not getting enough protein to replace the cells that die every day, much less recover from major surgery and a 45 pound weight loss." I recommended he start eating scrambled eggs, a favorite, for breakfast. He moaned about what a "pain" it was; could he scramble a week's worth at a time, and microwave them every day? (Eeeeeew.)

Instead, I hit on chocolate Atkins shakes. He was willing to make and drink those, and they were an infinitely better breakfast than a powdered sugar donut. Still, the last time I visited him, about six weeks before he died, Dad's protein shake was the only nutritious thing he consumed all day. He had the shake for breakfast, a brownie for lunch, and vanilla ice cream with Hershey's syrup for supper.

Somehow, with these dietary habits, plus smoking, Dad made it to 78. Sounds pretty good, but his health was lousy for the last several years of his life. He had the colon cancer 18 years ago, followed by years of really bad gut trouble and the surgery I mentioned. He had prostate cancer, and wound up taking medication for it which caused depression. His breathing was bad, and only got worse, over the space of five or six years. He suffered degenerative nerve damage in his legs and feet, which made him progressively less steady, and led to his falling a lot, especially since he didn't want to use a cane -- "I don't want to look like a feeble old man." "Uh, Dad? Clue phone. It's for you." I wondered a bit whether the nerve damage might be caused by vitamin deficiency -- lack of thiamin can damage peripheral nerves. He had ongoing trouble with his urinary tract, and for a while had tubes running into his kidneys. His doctor had to keep transfusing him, to replace the blood he lost as a result.

In short, Dad managed to live out a normal lifespan, but his last fifteen years or so sure weren't what I'm aiming for in my twilight years. Dad joked that since his father had dropped dead of a heart attack at fifty eight, he'd never expected to live so long; if he had he might have taken better care of himself. I call BS. Nothing could have gotten Dad to eat decently or quit smoking, or he would have done it when his health started to go, rather than continued through years of degeneration.

People sometimes say, regarding my refusal to eat junk, "You've got to die of something! You could get hit by a truck tomorrow." I'm painfully aware of that; my mother's Alzheimer's was triggered by a head injury caused by a hit-and-run driver. Mom did eat well, and took her vitamins, didn't smoke, walked every day, and was bloomingly health and fantastically intelligent until some drunken idiot stole that from her. I know about the uncertainty of fate.

But I've had years and years of feeling well that nothing can take away from me. I have more energy at fifty one than I did at fifteen. I live my life on a long-playing high.

And anyway -- what if I don't get hit by a truck? I don't want to spend my last years like my father, unable to breathe, unable to walk. Dad paid for his stubbornness and his childlike tastes.

On the other hand, he always let me know that he thought I hung the moon. And now I'm crying, and wishing the phone would ring, and I'd hear "Hey, kid, it's your old man" just one more time.

I miss you, Daddy.