In a few weeks, I will be celebrating my father’s 106th birthday.
I bake a cake because he always wanted cake for desert and was heard often to
ask, “What, no cake?” at the end of a family dinner.
One of my first memories is of waking from a nightmare and
crawling into my parents’ bed, regaling my father with a detailed description
of the house I wanted. Although he had to rise at dawn to drive to the next
town to work as a carpenter until after sundown, he listened, questioned and
made suggestions for my dream house until I fell back to sleep and woke in my
own bed in the morning,
My father’s love of cake was especially intense for Strawberry
Shortcake. The year I turned five, I was allowed the honor of presenting my
mother’s famous strawberry, whipped cream and Bisquick biscuit layered cake,
carrying it from the kitchen to the dining room. My proud entry, the smile and
pride on my father’s face was heart-swelling and … I tripped.
Falling face first into his birthday cake, already crying my heart
out, are all I clearly remember of my shameful moment. Though there was undoubtedly chaos for a
moment after the disaster, laughter and a clean-up of me and the floor, I can only
imagine mother served another, different cake and my dad ate it with pleasure.
In the following year, my father left our home to find better work
to feed his family. When he had a good job with a small construction firm and a
place for us to live, my mother drove across the country with me, my younger
sister and older brother—newly licensed to drive. When we arrived in San
Francisco, I was shocked to be told I’d been enrolled in school and that would
start two weeks after my father’s birthday.
But I couldn’t read!
Explaining to my father I was determined not to go to school, not
until I learned reading, he sat me down with a book—title forgotten—to teach me
how to do this marvelous thing.
My dad never let a teaching opportunity go by without taking
advantage. Road trips were chances to have spelling Bees and I could always, by
the time we reached our destination, spell the longest word in the English language
or the medical term for a recently discovered cure for a condition. We always
stopped at roadside attractions such as dinosaur exhibits or local museums and
trading posts.
When my younger sister had trouble learning the alphabet, my
father spent his very few leisure hours teaching her the letters on a standing
chalkboard and magnetic easel we had received as a Christmas present. She
thought of it as a punishment but I always saw his efforts as a gift and made
an effort to do the same for my children.
My father worked every weekend and evening to repair properties my
parents had bought to build a rental property business. They eventually owned
several properties and were able to buy their own house.
At this same time, my father discovered square dancing as a
favorite leisure activity. My sister and I were too young to be left at home at
night or over their weekend Hoedowns so we learned “do-si-do (dosado)” and “Allemande left” with the adult dancers. From square
dancing, he moved on to round dancing. He and I practiced, when my mom as
presiding over her PTA meetings, in our living room.
Between them, my parents ran a successful home rental business,
while my dad still worked as a carpenter and my mom ran the household and made
cakes.
At the age of 53, cancer fatally struck my father. He survived for
only six months. My mother had to practice giving him morphine by repeatedly
stabbing a syringe into an orange. He was in so much pain, he begged to die but
he still had enough energy and commitment to my well-being to tell me to stand
up straight.
This year, my dad has been gone for as many years as he lived. I
have honored his birthday with my husband and sons—who are all so much like
him—with cake and ice cream. And this year, I will make a Strawberry Shortcake
but I will give my daughter-in-law the honor of carrying it to the table.
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