I talked to my dad on the phone this morning. He sounded tired, but still was chatty. My dad doesn’t hear very well anymore. If anything, that just gives home more reason to do most of the talking. 

“Dad, how are you doing? What are you guys up to today?” I kicked off with, he took it from there.

I bought a corned beef the other day. $17, you know, the kind of roast beef that’s packaged in the brine? All you have to do is put it in a pot on the stove and cover it just barely cover it with water. I cut up cabbage too and put in potatoes. It’s not hard to make. You simmer it on the stove. 1 hour per pound, that’s what they recommend. It was so good! Sandy loved it. It was a lot of meat tho. Do you ever make that? Make a corned beef? It’s delicious, and it’s not expensive, we got 3 or 4 meals out of it. Today I’m going to thinly slice the rest of the cabbage, very thin, add some mayonnaise, make a little coleslaw. You know, you can pay $4 for a half lb of premised coleslaw, but it’s so easy to make.”

I noticed during the conversation how many details my dad included, the price of the meat, the detailed cooking instructions. My dad was a teacher, and I suppose at 89, that’s what he still is. Every conversation, an opportunity to explain, to illuminate. 

He started talking about current events, I’d interrupted his Sunday news show with Farid Zakaria. He was listening to them talk about China and that led him to explain to me the history behind the settlement of Taiwan, what it was called first, how it came into being and what the Chinese perspective is about it now. “They won’t go to war over it, he exclaimed calmly. They threaten to every decade or so, but they won’t.”

Then he spoke about education and how teaching a kid to memorize facts and figures does nothing to teach them how to think. “You have to teach the context, don’t just say the Civil war happened x. Explain the circumstances that lead up to it. The south didn’t just attack Sumpter, they were provoked. Did you know that? Their food was cut off so there was a response. You have to consider what lead up to the things that happened.” He’s absolutely right. These days, pressure to adhere to curriculum and perform for standardized testing has dissipated the kind of learning our kids get. My dad says, “It’s a shame.” And he’s right. I have a college degree, but my knowledge of world history, politics, language, religion, it all pales in comparison to my dad’s. And he’s likely forgotten 50% of what he once knew.

My dad goes on. He loves food, has always loved to cook. Like me, he’s a peasant cook, “a little of this, a little of that, cook it till it’s done.” He doesn’t just say, we had fish, he shares with me that he bought a thick slice of orange roughy, from Joseph’s market. Orange roughy, he explains, comes from New Zealand. He goes on, sharing the seasoning he used, the sides he prepared with it. How long he cooked it. How delicious it was.

My dad loves details, he loves to share. Mostly though, he loves his family. It’s been over a year since I’ve seen him. Thankfully my middle sister and I made a quick visit to Florida 18 months ago for his 88th birthday. I know each one more he gets now is a blessing. He mentions he’s coming up north for a week in May. I am caught off guard by this news, grateful. I realize that I am tearing up at the thought of seeing my father again. I miss him, the stubborn old dude.

“They opened the pool area back up again,” he shares, with a sense of relief in his voice. I recognize how hard the isolation has been for this extrovert, head of the classroom guy. “I wrote a very strong letter to the community management, a very strong letter. I told them, look, we’ve all been seeing one another down here for nearly 20 years, and most people don’t stay all year. They go back to NY before Passover, so we don’t have much opportunity. These are our friends. We can socially distance and wear masks. Why can’t we gather at the pool?” There was a sadness in his voice. I could tell that he’s been lonely. And also, perhaps, that he recognizes there may not be that many days left to tell his stories, to recount the details. 

I will listen.