lessons i learned from my dad

i just recently realized that there are still lessons that i learned from my parents that i specifically remember learning. here are two from my dad in the kitchen:

–one day, he left me in charge of supper which was cooking in the crockpot. he told me to turn the crockpot off when the meat was falling off of the bone. all day long, i’d periodically open the lid and check and no, the meat was still on the bone! it was sort of an amelia bedelia moment for me when he came home and told me that he meant, “falling off the bone when you poke it with a fork or something” (when i recently recalled this particular lesson, it reminded me that lots of kids that age are very literal when it comes to following directions. i find that to be true in my crafty class at work all the time.)

–another time, i was making a batch of cookies. just as i was ready to put the dirty cookie-dough bowl in the sink to fill it with water, my dad swooped in and said, “there’s a whole ‘nother cookie in there!” and proceeded to scrape the bowl with a rubber scraper, construct a cookie from the bits he gathered and bake it on a plate in the microwave. that’s when i realized that, in addition to conserving food, scraping the bowl out like that makes it easier to clean.

i still mention this second lesson to mr. happy stuff when we find ourselves baking together and he reminds me each time that he’s already heard the story and he’s not all that impressed. so, now i’m telling you, a new audience, the story of my dad and the last cookie in the bowl.

why is this happy stuff? well, i like to remember glimpses of specific instants of my past. not just the general, overarching, “i remember what it was like to live in that house” types of memories, but the memories of events that happened only once. those feel like a true portal into the past.