I think a lot about my Dad on Father’s Day and what being a great Dad really means.

When I was 18 months old I contacted spinal meningitis and then shortly thereafter, the measles.  I understand that I spent weeks in the hospital on intravenous medications that I would attempt to pull out on my own, so the medical staff’s solution was to secure me into this handy little device that they borrowed from a different area of the hospital-a straight jacket.  Hospitals had different policies and approaches in those days, parents were restricted to the same visiting hours as everyone else and my parents were able to visit me for an hour in the afternoon and another hour in the evening.  They spent most of this time trying to coax me to eat as I was notoriously picky while a child (ironic).  I refused all hospital food and my parents would sneak up bologna and 7 up during their visits.  I have been told that there was some concern during this time, that I may die as other children had succumbed to the condition, while still others were left deaf or blind or with mobility issues.  I survived unscathed, with the exception of night terrors while I was growing up, a fear of men (ironic) and an exceptional close relationship with my Daddy.

Years later, I have married a man who has many qualities of my Dad and we have two beautiful children.  Daughter #1 is coming down with what we though was a flu so D and J1 head down to Minneapolis for a short vacation without us.  My Dad helps me nurse her back to health.  We were told to get any calories into her as we could because her violent vomiting seems to have subsided.  Dad comes over with fish sticks and freezies and suggests that he stays while she has a nap and I try to take a bath.  While I am in the tub, I hear her give a little cry from the couch in the family room.  I go to her to find that she is completely paralysed.  My Dad follows in his car while an ambulance whisks us to the hospital.  Daddy sits in the corner of the emergency room while murmurs of meningitis and brain tumors are being discussed with me by the doctors.  I remember him saying something which I could not make out.  When I asked what he said, he spoke up “Oh God, not again”.

After a day of various tests and a ct scan, D and J1 leave our car in Minneapolis and fly home.  My Mom and Dad are with me when he arrives and we get the news that there is no tumour on the brain.  Our beautiful, smart and perfectly healthy 5 year old has meningoencephalitis, a combination of swelling of the meninges (the tissue that surrounds the spinal column) and the brain.  They will not find out for a number of weeks what has caused the infection.  They set up a bed for me in the hospital room and indicate a chair for D.  That was the only night that I tried to sleep beside her.  I was pregnant with our youngest and our little 3 year old son was waiting for me at home.  D slept in a chair for a month by her bedside, would shower in the morning and then head to work for the day (we owned our own restaurant at the time) until one especially kind, family doctor encouraged D to go home with me and sleep in our bed.  He reassured D that they would be there every time Daughter #1 needed something through the night.  My Mom and Dad were there every day for afternoon visiting hours to bring little gifts of encouragement for our daughter and food for me.

I get really annoyed when I hear the phrase: “It is the thought that counts”.  My friends, it is not the “thought”, it is the act of being there every day; it is sleeping in a chair, it is “action”, not “thought”.  For me and for my children: action and devotion is what makes a great Dad.

How do I honour my husband on Father’s Day?  It is hard, no-impossible, for him to know what he means to me and our family, so I do what you all do.  I buy him a weed-eater and a nice pair of shorts and I fix him a dinner which he requests.  But then the next morning I am compelled to write something to share with the world.  He is the BEST Dad I know and I was loved by my own BEST Dad too.

Kath’s quote: “The father who would taste the essence of his fatherhood must turn back from the plane of his experience, take with him the fruits of his journey and begin again beside his child, marching step by step over the same old road.” ~Angelo Patri

Love-that is all.

One day last September, our Mom took ill and had to make a visit to the hospital.  Little did we or she know that she would never return to the home where she had lived for 58 years.  At the onset of her illness, we were so focused upon ensuring that she got better, I for one never really thought about the house. Mom isn’t completely settled into a new place yet.  She went from the Concordia Hospital to Deer Lodge and is now at the Misrecordia Hospital waiting for a space to come open for her at Concordia Place.  But it was apparent, pretty much from the start, that Mom wouldn’t be able to return to her home.  So we’ve been busy over this past winter and spring getting the house ready to sell to another family.  Possession date is July 1 and we have been taking turns spit polishing it up for the new family.  This past week, I tackled washing the windows and had what might have been my final walk through.

This is the bathroom that 8 of us shared when my 5 siblings and my parents all lived together at the house.  This sometimes meant drawing the shower curtain if you were in the bathtub, so that someone else could use the toilet.  My fondest memory was of perching on the toilet to watch my Daddy shave in the morning.  He was a careful shaver and loved the ritual, mixing up a warm lather with his real horse hair brush and shaving so close that his skin looked blue to me.  I can recreate the feel of his wiskerless face against my cheek now, even though he has been in heaven for 17 years.

This was the room that my two oldest brothers shared until a new bedroom was built for them in the basement.  They had two single beds that each straddled a wall.  On Saturday mornings, my twin brother and sister and I used to wake them up and then climb under the covers with them.  We would have pirate ship fights with them and toss all our stuffed animals back and forth and take hostages of each other.  After the boys were moved into their new room downstairs, this became my very own room-quite a feat with 8 people living in a 4 bedroom house.  Perhaps this is the reason why my family always teases me that I was spoiled.  I will admit it, I felt spoiled (and deeply loved).  Somehow my Mom and Dad found ways to make us all feel this way.

This is the hallway from the bedrooms to the kitchen and living room.  Before I had my own room, the twins and I all slept together in a double bed.  I don’t remember there being an issue with space, but I do recall how it was so hard to fall asleep sometimes with two little monkeys in the bed with me.  We would giggle and have so much fun, until…….we would hear my Dad’s feet hit the hallway floor coming towards our room to tell us to hush up and go to sleep.  As soon as we heard that first foot fall, we would suppress our giggles and pretend we were sleeping, but we weren’t fooling our Dad.

For many years the only TV in the house was in the living room and I remember watching Bugs Bunny cartoons at lunch time and Bonanza and the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights.  I also recall “reserving” the TV to tune into my favourites of the Paddy Duke Show and then the Flying Nun.  Christmas morning was so exciting in this room with heaps of presents everywhere and Christmas cards hung on strings adorning the walls.

Neil Campbell School was a half block down this back lane and from grade one on, we all made the trek on our own.  I remember being instructed to run as fast as I could (for me that was never fast at all-bottom heavy, you know) down this lane during the Bay of Pigs crisis. It seemed like only days later that we saw the announcement on TV of the assassination of President Kennedy while home for lunch hour.  A day or so after that our naughty dog Pepita, who liked to chase cars, was run over by a truck in front of our house while I was across the street borrowing a cup of sugar at the Dyer’s.  So there was sadness too.

And last but not least, this was the kitchen, the heart and soul of our home.  Mom always had a pot of soup or stew on the go and I learned how to make cinnamon buns and pinch perogy edges, standing at the kitchen table.  Sometimes dinner was pancakes or spaghetti with tomato soup poured on top.  Other times though, supper was steaks pan-fried in butter, thick and juicy pork chops and more corn on the cob than you can dream of eating.  Mom would spend all day making doughnuts to feed the paper boys of the neighbourhood because the bin where they collected their papers had been placed on our back drive.  My Dad loved to cook too and made amazing baked ham and pizza with “thin crust” before anyone ever thought about thin crust pizza.

If the walls could talk, they would speak of constant cooking and consuming, TV shows and record playing, people coming and going after school and hockey games and drumming gigs and theatre school, of reading books and naps on the couch and my Dad who always watched TV by lying right in front of it on the floor.  The walls soaked up all of our giggles and laughter but also the tears of heart-breaking sorrows and losses.  It was a good house.  It was our house.

Kath’s quote:  “Love grows in small spaces”.  Quoted from some country song I heard long ago.

Love that is all.

 

A friend of The Frenchman lives with us.  They worked on archeology projects together and he is an archivist and conservator.  His stories around the supper table about his latest projects are always fascinating.  He also replicates antique coins as a hobby.  Check out his website at www.awestruckworkshop.com.  He recently asked the Frenchman for gift hints for my birthday and the reply was “hearts” so he did some researching.  Here’s an excerpt from the site: http://www.sedwickcoins.com/articles/hearts.htm

The Hearts of Potosí were minted in five denominations: ½, 1, 2, 4, and 8 reales (though half-real Hearts are so rare that only a handful of pieces have been confirmed), and apparently only from the very late 1600s (the reign of Charles II) to the mid-1700s (the reign of Philip V). The outline of a corazón can vary significantly, but it is basically Valentine-style yet with a wide, tall stem and a long, tapering tail. Predictably, almost every confirmed Heart has been holed at the top of the stem. Unlike most holes in cobs, these may have been mint-produced holes.

We don’t know for sure why cobs were cut into heart shapes at the Potosí mint, but given their scarcity, their usually careful execution, and their tendency to be holed, they were most likely produced for special use as religious pendants known as “ex votos.” The prevailing theory is that they were intended to be used by church officials, as the heart was known to be a sacred symbol of the Roman Catholic Church. It is also believed that women sewed these images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ into their blouses, a custom which is still observed in remote Andean villages today.

[Note: The Catholic Sacred Heart symbol, as demonstrated in ex votos and other manifestations, is in fact a flaming heart, usually with a long, curved tail. This matches the Potosí Heart cobs precisely, their prominent stems at top apparently representing flames.]

This birthday note was affixed to the gift: “I know you really like hearts and all things turquoise-though not turquoise, it is a South American Spanish heart to remind you of those Azul waters of the Caribbean!”

The coin is two-sided and looks gorgeous when worn as a single pendant.

Kath’s quote: “Lord into your Sacred Heart I place my heart united to all my needs and desires, I present humbly my petitions, please deign to listen to my plea, embrace me with your love, respond to my soul, look at me your child who comes attracted by your love.”-Unknown

Love-that is all.

 

Even the name of this little food store, bakery and eatery at 105-819 Sargent Ave in the Sargent Park area of the West End: “Viena Do Castelo” sounds foreign, romantic and delicious to me.  I would guess that the name was selected in tribute to a community in northern Portugal and my pre-visit research indicated that they are the purveyors of Portuguese specialty foods.  My husband and I have long dreamed of visiting the Mediterranean country, especially the Azores.  When I arrived to pick up our pre-ordered chicken, a gorgeous vista of the Azores adorned the wall behind the checkout counter.  That part of the country is the home to one half of the married Esteves team that own and operate the store and restaurant.

The whole roasted chicken and potatoes that I ordered for takeout tasted just as if I had pulled it out of my own oven (without having to scrub a baked-on roasting pan-yippee).  Although the chicken was on the small side (for the price) the meat was firm and moist.  When I had called about picking up our supper, owner Luis cheerfully said “We roast our chickens to order so I’ll put one in the oven for you. Would you like it mild, medium or spicy?” We are “moderates” with our spice level (and just about everything else in our lives) and the seasoning balance was perfect. The spice mixture that permeated the flesh of the chicken, also seasoned the potatoes that had surrounded the chicken in the roasting pan.  My husband especially enjoyed the latter.

Also tempting were Viena Do Castelo’s cheese buns.  They tasted to us as if parmesan and garlic had been rolled into the dough “cinnamon bun style” with a generous topping of more grated cheddar cheese on top.  I would love to drop in for another half dozen of these for takeout or for a quick snack at one of the sunny tables right in the shop.

When I asked if the chicken was his Portuguese mamas’ recipe, Luis replied “No-it is something that my wife invented.  She’s always dreaming up new recipes”.  This husband and wife are definitely a committed business team.  They even had what Luis dubbed a “store baby”. Their youngest son was born about three days after the store opened and subsequently was brought to the eatery on a daily basis until the time that he learned how to walk.  Now that’s a family run business! Luis adds that many store customers ask about him to this day.  As Luis was running my tab up, I read the tattoo that graces the inside of his forearm, it simply stated: “Familia”.

Kath’s quote: “Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life!” ~Albert Einstein

Love-that is all.

 

 

I recently came upon a statistic about 18-34 year olds depending primarily upon processed and pre-made food and the reason for this being that "from scratch" cooking was not modelled by their parents.  I commented in a recent post, that this was not the case in my family and a couple of weeks ago we had dinner with three other couples where this was not the case either.  In fact, one offspring is a gold-plate chef and two others have sons who are not chefs, but professional cooks.  I recounted our evening together and pondered what we had all done "right" to ensure that our children were comfortable in the kitchen. One couple was in from Toronto for the weekend and staying with another couple.  One half of the hosting couple was about to celebrate a monumental birthday which was our reason to get together.  None of us wanted the hosting couple to go to a whole lot of trouble because, the dinner was in their honour after all.  In addition, the visiting couple did not want to spend their short time grocery shopping and in an unfamiliar kitchen so I suggested that we order in.  Consensus was that even considering the concerns noted above, it would still be better if we all cooked and contributed ourselves and so..... The menu was decidedly simple: D and I provided little plates of sausage, cheese bread, olives and other brined items. At the appointed time, R fired up the grill showing me how he first brushes the grills with oil and hot sauce to neutralize any flavours from previous use. First he marinated the salmon in soya, balsamic vinegar and sarachi sauce.  He called the fish "Iphone Salmon" because the trick was to flip the fillets, precisely when his Iphone signalled, to ensure even cooking without over-cooking.  The lid of the grill was lowered for intervals and the cuts were placed crosswise on the grill each time they were flipped to decorate them with the precise cross-hatch marks. The result?  Perfection! The salmon was accompanied by boiled baby potatoes tossed in butter and fresh dill, grilled asparagus and the lightest, freshest tasting bean salad, I have ever tried.  I am not typically a bean lover but this one was sensational.  So much so, that I had to get M's recipe:

 Influencers of the next generation of “real” food eaters.

So did we have some fun?  Absolutely!  We were entertained by the antics of the bearded fellow with the parasols stuck into his whiskers.  He kept disappearing into their home and coming back out attired as famous bearded men-think: ZZ Top, Moses, Duck Dynasty, etc.  (Perhaps some wine was enjoyed as well).

Kath’s quote: “The basic thing a man should know is how to change a tyre and how to drive a tractor. Whatever that bearded dude is doing on the Dos Equis beer commercials sets the bar. That’s your guy. Every man should be aiming to be like him. The beard is just the tip of the iceberg.”-Timothy Olyphant

Love-that is all.