My father likes honey in his tea.
This morning, out of the kindness of my heart, I went to a farmer's market and bought him some raw honey, straight from the beehive. I even bought him a flavor my wife assured me 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, as my wife was making his tea, she told him how I went out of my way just so he could have a local honey to sweeten it with. My father insists local honey is good for his allergies. I don’t suffer from any, so I wouldn’t know about that, but if HE thinks it does...
"You'll like it, dad," I told him. "The guy I bought it from harvests the honey himself."
The honey contains no extra ingredients, and it's not cheap. I told him that, except for the "it's not cheap" part.
My father picked up the jar and looked at it with interest. I wondered what he was looking at. Was he appreciating its dark, rich color? This raw honey is not the clear, amber color you get in mass-marketed brands. Was he fascinated by the honeycomb the harvester includes? It's a pretty cool thing to look at. Kind of like the worm in a bottle of mescal.
"So,” my father finally grumped, “you couldn't find anything smaller?"
On the surface, that might sound ungrateful, even rude, but it’s not. Not really. You see, it's not that my father is ungrateful, it's just that he expresses his gratitude with ingratitude. For some reason, it just doesn't occur to my father to be grateful, and when he tries to say something nice about something you've 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 my parents on an ocean cruise to Mexico. They had never been on a cruise before. Well, my father had, but it was to the Phillipines during World War Two, so that one doesn’t count. It cost us a pretty penny, true, but that was one way to pay them back for all those peanut butter sandwiches my mother used to feed me and my hungry friends back when we were kids.
As we were walking along the beach in Ensenada, 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 exclaimed, 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 he thought it was. Does that make sense?
Yeah, I didn't think so either.
One thing I've learned about my elderly father since he's started living with us, I've learned he likes to have a salad along with his dinner. He especially likes carrots in his salad.
Unfortunately, we were out of carrots one day. All we had was a bag of those miniature ones. Baby carrots, I think they're called. Personally, I like them. They make for a bite-sized snack without any of the hard work. My dog likes them, too. He’s not particular. All they are, are regular carrots that have a few bumps or bruises on them and can't be sold, not even to Walmart, so the PT Barnum Carrot Company shaves them down to a smaller size and repackages them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with them. Carrots are carrots, for gosh sakes.
So my wife made my father his salad, topped it off with the babies, and set it down in front of him. He looked at them as if he'd never seen a carrot before in his life. He picked one up. Examined it, leaning it this way, then that. Lifted it to his nose. Smelled it.
Sniff, sniff.
"Well," he declared, “I don't like these carrots. I don’t like them at all.”
“Why not, dad?” I asked him.
“They just don't taste right."
I couldn't help but notice he had made that last declaration without tasting them first.
"That's the problem with growing them this small,” he continued, “they don't taste as good as the larger ones."
My wife and I looked at each other over the salads we were eating. I tried one of the offending carrots. It tasted just like it was supposed to. Pretty good, in fact.
"Good salad, sweetie," I told my wife. "Thanks."
That was my way of apologizing for not being an orphan.
"You're welcome," she answered.
That was her way of apologizing for running out of carrots.
Meanwhile, my father didn't hear a word we said. He was still looking at the carrots as if they were what our dog leaves in the backyard for us to pick up in the morning.
That's our dog's way of telling us he has nothing to apologize about.
"Well, I'm not going to eat them," my father announced to no one in particular. Then he looked toward my wife. "You should buy the regular carrots," he told her.
"Yes, dad," my saintly wife told him.
I thought about explaining to him how baby carrots are made. And then I thought about telling him he should be more appreciative of my wife’s efforts.
And then I finished my salad.
The Duchene Brothers both enjoy carrots, baby and otherwise, and keep a healthy supply of them at RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com, or JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com, and @JimDuchene. Broccoli, on the other hand...
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