Out Of The Kindness Of My Heart...

My father likes honey in his tea.
     Today, out of the kindness of my heart, I went to a farmer's market and bought him some raw honey, straight from the bee hive. I even bought him a flavor I knew he liked, Orange Blossom. I didn't know honey came in different flavors, but that's neither here nor there. Well, that's not quite true. The honey's here, and my money's there.
     Later that evening, as my wife is making his tea, she tells him how I drove to the farmer's market just so he could have a local honey for his tea.
     "You'll like it, dad," I told him. "The guy I bought it from harvests the honey himself, and it's a lot sweeter than store bought honey." The honey contains no extra ingredients, and it's not cheap. It's also supposed to be good for your allergies. I tell him all that, and more. Except for the "it's not cheap" part.
     And then I have to repeat myself several times after that.
     My father picks up the jar of honey, and looks at it with interest. I wonder what he's looking at. Is he looking at its dark, rich color? This raw honey is not the clear, amber color you get at a grocery store, such as Walmart or Albertson's. Is he looking at the honeycomb inside? It's a pretty cool thing to see, but then I'm a kid at heart. Kind of like the worm in a bottle of mescal. (Ahem... so I've heard.) Then...
     "So," he says, "you bought me a small bottle, huh?"
     It's not that my father is ungrateful, it's just that he shows his gratitude by being ungrateful. Actually, "ungrateful" is the wrong word. Let me get out my thesaurus and try to find out what the right word might be.
     Hmmm... Unappreciative? Ingratitude? Thanklessness? Nope, nope, and nope.
     Let me try to explain it with more than one word, then: It just doesn't occur to my father to be grateful, and when he tries to say something nice about something you've just given him or done for him, it comes out, ahem, not so nice. 
     Back when my beloved mother was still alive, my wife and I took them on a nice cruise to Ensenada, Mexico.  It cost a pretty penny, true, but it was one way to pay my parents back for all those peanut butter sandwiches me and my friends ate when I was a kid.
     As we were walking along the beach, my father looked out over the ocean, took a deep breath of that salty sea air, and said, "You know, I've been to beaches nicer than this one."
     "Honey!" my mother said, in her I-can't-believe-you-just-said-that voice.
     Criticizing the beach we were on was my father's way of telling me how nice the beach was. Does that make sense? Yeah, I didn't think so either. It's true, though.
     One thing I've learned about my father since he's started living with us, I've learned he likes to eat a salad every day for dinner, along with the main course. He especially likes carrots in his salad.
     Unfortunately, one day we were out of fresh carrots. All we had was a bag of those miniature ones. Personally, I like them. They make for a nice snack without any of the hard work. My dog likes them, too. All miniature carrots are, are large carrots that had a few bumps or bruises on them, and can't be sold. Not even to Walmart. So the carrot company will shave them down to smaller sizes. There is absolutely nothing wrong with them. They're carrots, for gosh sakes.
      So my wife puts a nice salad, topped with the miniature carrots, in front of my father. He looks at it, as if he's never seen a carrot before in his life. He picks one up. Examines it, leaning it this way then that. Lifts it to his nose. Smells it.
     Sniff, sniff.
     "Hmm..." he says. "Huh...  well, I don't like these carrots. They just don't taste right."
     I couldn't help but notice he had made that declaration without tasting them first.
     "what, dad?" my wife asks, pretending not to have heard him.
     "They just don't taste right," he repeats. "That's the problem with growing small carrots, they don't taste as good as the large ones."
     My wife and I look at each other over the salads we're eating. I eat a carrot. Yep, it tastes just like it's supposed to.
     "Good salad, sweetie," I tell her. "Thanks."
     It's my way of apologizing for, well, you know.
     "You're welcome," she answers.
     It's her way of saying she accepts my apology.
     Meanwhile, my father hasn't heard a word we said. He's still looking at the carrots like they're what our dog leaves in the backyard for us to pickup in the morning. It's our dog's way of telling us he has nothing to apologize about.
     "Well, I'm not going to eat them," my father pouts like a 2 year-old. He looks to my wife. "You should buy the regular carrots," he tells her.
     "Yes, Dad," my wife patiently tells him. She's a saint, I tell you. "The next time I go to Costco, I'll get some."
     I think about explaining to my elderly father how the carrots are made. And then I think better of it.
     And then I finish my salad.
   
 

Raising My Father 

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