Remnants of my Father

I smoothed the crumpled piece of foil and molded it onto the pan.

My husband went silent. He’d been chatting at me from his spot at the counter stool.

I glanced his way. Above his smile, his twinkling blue eyes observed me.

What? I said, lifting my shoulders.

Remnants of your father, he said.

Just as my father would do, I was reusing foil that should have been tossed.

I’d given up batting away his habits a long time ago.

Dad pushed his way into my thoughts.  

On Christmas Eve my family gathered to open gifts. After the obligatory photos in front of the tinsel decorated Christmas tree dad handed my older siblings and myself sharp knives.

He demonstrated how to carefully cut the Christmas wrapping paper and bows from our gifts and how to stack it in a neat pile. 

We will reuse this paper next Christmas, he said.

By the time I was a teenager, I’d seen and reused some of the same green, red and gold paper a dozen times or more.

The first time I visited a neighbor’s home on a chilly Christmas morning it was peculiarly unsettling to see piles of ripped up Christmas paper and perfect red bows strewn across their orange shag carpeted living room.

I thought there’d been a robbery, or maybe their cat went berserk resulting in this wrapping paper carnage. But later I learned this was a method of opening gifts for many families.  Just not ours. And to this day, I am unable to rip wrapping paper off of a gift.

Remnants of my father.

He operated our home like a small recycling center.  The refrigerator shelves were stacked with reused sour cream and cottage cheese containers labeled with black permanent marker - Potatoes, Meat, Goulash. We had no need for Tupperware.

Even my mother’s discarded L’eggs pantyhose with runs in them received a second life.

Dad cut the pantyhose legs off, knotted the leg openings, and made a beige skull nylon cap. The area designed to fit a woman’s tush fit snugly over his head creating a protective layer that prevented paint and oil splatters from getting into his hair. 

Wearing pantyhose on my head was one remnant of my father that didn’t stick with me. I prefer to wear pantyhose the way they were originally designed to be worn - bottom on my bum, not my head.

And when it came to cars, as a prerequisite to driving solo, we were required to know how to change a tire, put snow chains on, and change the oil.

Dad outfitted each of our used cars with an empty red Folger’s coffee can in the engine compartment. In the can, - a rag for cleaning the oil dip stick, a tire pressure gauge, a screwdriver, extra oil, and the top of a plastic milk carton cut off at the neck and made into a cylinder for pouring the oil.

One time my mother’s car broke down in a posh neighborhood. Two men in a snazzy Mercedes stopped to help her. They popped open her hood and looked at the engine. With a confused look one man said, Ma'am. He pointed at the Folgers can. What’s that doing in here? 

**

Later in life, when I needed help building the forms for front entry cement steps, dad showed up with a box of Folgers cans and Campbell’s soup tins.  We mixed the cement and then he tossed the cans into the step forms as filler before pouring the cement over them.

Every time I walked up those steps, I thought of the Folger’s cans encapsulated in them beneath my feet and envisioned future archeologists scratching their heads when they chiseled the concrete away to discover these embalmed treasures.

**

One Thanksgiving my parents were assigned to bring a green mixed salad to our gathering. I gave the bowl a cursory glance when they set the salad on the counter.  An alarm in my mind registered that something was not quite right with it.

What was it?

The bowl was covered by a clear shower cap with an elastic band that my parents picked up at a hotel while traveling.  

It was ingenious, but I didn’t think the other guests would appreciate my dad’s inventiveness, so I quickly removed the shower cap covering the salad they were about to eat.  

Remnants of my father.

**

My husband picked up the chat where it had been left, bringing me back to preparing dinner.

**

On the night my father crossed to the other side, he unclasped the Boeing company watch he’d received more than 36 years earlier at his retirement and handed it to me. He wouldn’t need it where he was going*.  The well used watch had a small airplane on its face. The watch was warm from my dad’s wrist. Then he slipped his gold wedding band off and enclosed my fingers around it.

Remnants of my father.

What remnants of your father do you carry with you?

Life. It's yours. Go all in.

*My father lived past 100. He donated himself to the University of Washington science department. The University of Washington picked him up the morning after his departure. We were told that he would be returned to us when the studies were completed. After about a year, my sister called to check on him and to inquire about when he was coming home. The person on the other line told her, He is still teaching the students, but he might be done soon.