The Autocrat of the Dinner Table

 In all honesty, my father was not a very good cook. Like some dads of his generation, he had a few dishes – a Chinese beef dish from Irene Kuo’s book, and a shrimp with dill concoction come immediately to mind. However, cooking could be a fraught experience for my father. He was an inveterate recipe-follower and sometimes prone to exclamations of “Rubbish!” or “Foolishness!” if derailed. When my father, rather than my mother, would make fondue, being in the kitchen with him felt a little bit like being in the desert with Oppenheimer at Los Alamos. For reasons known only to himself, he started making falafel at home after he retired, and while the results were creditable, the process could be dramatic.

Fortunately, my mother is a talented, energetic and ambitious cook. She is much better than I am about dating and commenting on receipts in her cookbooks, and it never ceases to astonish me when I look up an elaborate receipt in her Julia Child or the NYT cookbook, and see a comment next to Veal Marengo, along the lines of “Sep 9, 76 – delicious,” and reflect that she was doing this kind of cooking while teaching full time and raising two sons. She cooked this way because she loved my father, and my father loved meals. Not food, per se, but meals. Over the course of my life, I can think of only a handful of dinners we shared that were not sit-down affairs, without television.

 My father loved meals because he loved to be with us, and by extension, our friends. The communion of the table, in a secular sense, was like a sacrament to him. Over the week I spent with family and friends preparing for his funeral, I was struck by how many of the memories of him people shared were constellated around the dinner table. If the table was a communion, there is no question that my father was the high priest. My friend Bob would address him as “Reverend,” and he was only partly teasing, I think. The notion of eating and running was foreign to him, and his greatest joy was in extending the time around the table with a story. For those of you reading this who were not lucky enough to know him, do not think of Aesop or Uncle Remus – rather than prefabricated nuggets of wisdom, these were salvos of reminiscence and anecdote.

Indeed, if my father’s picture were used to illustrate a word in the dictionary, it would be “regale.” This was his primary mode of discourse at the table. Someone might mention Austin, Texas at the other end of the table, and my father would be off, describing a summer he spent there when his father was lecturing at the University of Texas. He was fourteen, just barely too young to drive, and thus stranded in a rented house on the outskirts of Austin. He was compelled to entertain himself, which he did by reading through the house’s library, which consisted mainly of the works of Virginia Woolf and Maria Edgeworth, if memory serves. At times, this mode would render conversation a bit unilateral, and we would refer to his excesses as “Oral Term Papers,” but they were almost always worth the price of admission. A particular pleasure of mine was to bring someone as a guest to our table, because it served as a pretext for another rendition of a favorite, like the story of Nels and Nels.

It can be difficult for a son to discern the particular impact of a parent on him, but I am persuaded that my father’s approach to dinner table conversation has informed not only my persona, but even the fundamental social interaction of my friends. When we gather, it is more a question of catching up on olds than of catching up on news. We regale each other with stories we all know – I am thinking in particular of one DK’s attempts to reach his paramour by bicycle and kayak very late one Maine evening, another DK’s visit to Times Square, an ill-considered effort to bring eggs to a football game. The joy of these stories lies not in their novelty, but in their familiarity.

 Not long before my father died, but regrettably far away from him, the cinetrix and I entertained a former student. I made the Zuni bread salad. It was a delightful evening, and in thanking us, our guest said something along the lines of “it was wonderful… the food, the wine, the conversation… the ritual of the meal.” I looked around for a robe, censer, or chalice, because I did not understand what she meant by the ritual of the meal. With the loss of my father, I understand. 

Comments

[debra van Culiblog]

Amen. Beautiful to be remembered in this way.

I have taken to heart your reminder to communicate love to my loved ones.

[PQ]

Thank you for sharing this, Fesser, and Well Done. I have felt far away from all of you, and this made me feel so much closer and brought back such cherished memories. You are all in my thoughts all the time these days.

[Mastthew Berlin]

Dan's propensity to pause, while in possession of the floor, used to lead to a certain amount of confusion in my childhood as to whether the tale or pronouncement had been concluded, and if so what--in its truncated form--could it have all meant.

[jv]

Your dad knew a lot of stuff. I liked not knowing what tale, fact, or lesson would come next. Nice voice, too. Thinking of you all. xo

[BK]

Well written. Well deserved. And welcome back.

We will forever miss him holding court around the table. And his voice has been stuck in my head the past weeks, addressing your mom, "Holly, my love..."

Funny though, I most often remember fondly not the lofty tales and professorial tone, but a certain joke about a horse's rectum. My chapped lips crack just thinking about it.

--BK

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