I never imagined that I’d need to encourage my Dad to eat good food. Growing up, he’d steal my mom’s amazing chocolate chip cookies out of the cookie jar—eating so many that he’d need to stuff the bottom with newspaper and line only the top with the remaining cookies so that it looked like it was still full. Or count breakfast as a bowl of grape nuts with heavy cream and a spoonful of sugar on top.  I haven’t even mentioned the ice cream frappes or the liberal use of butter and mayonnaise in his fried potato pancakes.  Clocking in at about 6’1 or 6’2 in his prime, consuming all of these questionable calories did not seem to make much a dent in his girth.

But he’s not in his prime any more. Honestly, I don’t think I am either—but one can safely say that at 85 years old, you are kind of past your prime. Maybe he’s an inch or so shorter, but he is also much lighter. His last visit to the doctor two days ago revealed that he is 158.6 pounds. He’s been at about the 160-pound mark for about a year now. He credits probably getting COVID and that doing the trick. Me, I don’t know what to think. I just want him to not drop any more weight.  

My Dad’s memory is also not the most amazing in terms of short-term function. Again, I suppose this is normal and even a welcome relief for someone of his age. It could be a lot worse.  But with that blind patch in his brain, he repeats the same things over and over again. I don’t mind it so much—if anything it lets me know what’s on his mind. 

One of the things that he mentions (especially when I see him again after an absence) is his weight loss. How much better he feels now. How people probably wouldn’t recognize him anymore because of it (this is totally false- he’s kind of an easily recognizable fixture around town). And while I completely understand how good it feels to not be carrying around that extra weight, again I don’t want him to drop any more off of his tall and wiry frame. 

My brother and I come up with strategies to make different foods for him. My brother of course knows better than I do what he’s most likely to eat. Me, I prepare different versions of foods and try to put some in front of him. He might eat a small bit. Or he might take one bite and say “No. Can’t do it,” before spitting it out directly into the trash bin. I don’t mind his honesty—just as he I know he knows full well what I am doing. I know he won’t be around forever, and it’s just that right now, I’d like whatever moments we have to be as good as they can be.

Yesterday I was working on a few too many projects simultaneously. One of them was preparing some Irish Soda Bread that Dad had specifically requested. We’re at the point that when he’s specifically asking for a food, we’re gonna go out of our way to have it in the house. We bought the buttermilk, I laid out the oats and the flour.  Again, I was multitasking poorly so when it came time for me to put the dough in the oven, I kind of wondered to myself if I actually remembered to include the baking soda. For sure I remember putting the container back in the pantry…but the actual scooping out of the powder and incorporating it into the dry flour mixture…. that was a dark patch in my own short-term memory.

As it turned out, the dough cooked up as a flat, large disc that did not rise. Dad did his best to eat one half of the top of one quadrant…. he toasted it up and smeared it with extra crunch peanut butter (rejoice for more calories!). I asked him what he thought and he told me that it was, “different”. I knew that I had failed in making a comically easy bread recipe. While Dad is actively revisiting the same recent memories or thoughts over and over with demonstrable relish, here I am going through the motions without really doing what I am supposed to be doing. I won’t tell you that one of us is any better or worse than the other. But this is where they are.

Today I decided to slow down a bit and find a new soda bread recipe. I found one that included a few dabs of butter in it (again, a vehicle for more calories!). I took out all of the ingredients once again, and tried to make another loaf. I had the baking soda next to me. I took the measuring spoon and I measured out an unlevel teaspoon’s worth. A bit extra for good measure; a sort of mea culpa for the failed loaf. Into the oven it went and I set the timer. It was then that I set upon a different task to fill the 30 minutes of bake time.

It didn’t take more than one check through the oven window to see that this bread would be different. It was rising beautifully, the scored cross breaking open and the ridges rising up. I breathed a sigh of relief once my timer went up and I took it out of the oven. A few taps on the bottom revealed a successful completion, and then I put it on a cooling rack.

The good thing about baked goods is that the smell welcomes people into the kitchen. My Dad used to love fresh bread out of the oven. “It’s like candy,” he would say before slathering a healthy pat of butter on top. I kind of hoped he’d do the same thing here.  I had even prepared a simple Tuscan soup that I enjoy making—the cold temperatures inviting this sort of thing. But he never made an appearance from the living room. Instead, he remained where he spends most time these days—in front of the television, watching shows about how things are made. Or perhaps something political which he knows to turn off once I wander into the living room.  

Once the bread was pretty much cool and untouched, and the soup starting to turn cold in its pot, my brother came into the kitchen. He recommended that I saw off a few thin strips of the bread and serve it up alongside a small, cocktail peanuts-sized bowl full of soup. This would be the attempt at supper tonight. And so I did just that. I heated up the soup and ladled a bit into the bowl. Then I took three small baton-sized pieces of the soda bread and toasted them up—just enough so that the butter I spread on top would melt into the crevices. Then I placed the bread sticks with the cup of soup on dessert plate and put it on his little table next to his chair in the living room. I then sat down on the sofa and held my breath.

It was not going to hurt my feelings if these taste combinations were not his jam. He had already rejected a handful of my proposals in the last week. Even last night when I made him some Kraft Spirals & Cheese, he only at a few and then dumped the rest in the trash, covering it up with the empty box of Kraft. I told my brother about this, and he told me that this was one part of his MO. He’s an adult, he’s entitled to eat or not eat what he wants—but we are just trying to ensure he reaches a basic threshold of calorie intake each day.

I could write a few more blog entries on this part, but my father also bakes his own special cookies that he separates from the rest of the food in the house. It’s a completely legal activity, but it’s not something that rest of us do. We have found that when we are not looking, he will take one out and consume on quarter of a cookie. If we happen to be walking by when he is doing this, he will try to hide the little Ziploc bag with the remote control. To us, this activity is largely uninteresting and we don’t mind it. After all, he’s an adult who is making his own culinary and recreational decisions that are well within the bounds of state-approved legislature.

But back to the soup and soda bread. He ate what I gave him, and I got the thumbs up that I had unscrewed the recipe. I had redeemed myself before the man who holds a valid Irish passport. But there was nothing else to it. No glorious triumph or feeling as though we’d found a way to get him to eat. Tomorrow will be another day, and I will soon no longer be here. My brother will remain and will be the one charged with placing plates between him and the flatscreen TV.

If you asked me what I’ve been eating for supper each day since I have been home, I will readily reply with the most apt word I know, “la schifezza”. In English the word is “crap” and I’m not really ashamed to say that I’m not doing my better than my Dad. When I am home, eating feels like more than a chore and I don’t want focus on preparing a balanced meal. So I grab what is nearby and what is easy. Like a quadrant of the rejected first batch of the soda bread. Or a bowl of Cheez-Its, or an Ice Cream Sandwich.  

We’re the luckiest kids in the world to still have our parents around in a way where we can each interact and (mostly) enjoy each other’s company. I get that this is a luxury that not everybody has. And while it is hard to watch the changes in my father as he grows older, I do my best to not judge him too harshly. If I am so lucky as to reach 85, there’s a pretty good chance that I won’t be super keen on dealing with food options either. And while I’m at it, I’ll be forgetting all kinds of things too—seeing as how I am living and breathing this existence already. 

I know that Dad is doing his best, even while he is basking in the hard-earned right to be doing whatever the heck he wants at this late hour. We spend our entire life trying to balance things, and you get to a point where you allow things to be dropped. Or you have no choice and this is how things are. We’ll keep bringing plates—understanding that they may or may not be rejected by him. But it’s the act of service, the offering of love in the interaction as the thing that counts. These stupid moments between kitchen and living room are the ones that I will cherish once I leave. And he eventually does too.