The Spiral Staircase wishes all its readers a good Pesach, Happy Easter, et cetera. The flowering trees on our street are all in bloom. I plan to monitor this site closely.
As my former boss once said, "Always bet on late bloomers."
I am home in NYC for a while, then head back out to Oklahoma to hang with my stepmom Donna. Perhaps we will feed the cows together again. Last week she let me drive the pickup truck while she sat in the back, scattering the feed behind us.
Tough times in Oklahoma recently. It's so very dry and windy out there; another wildfire just destroyed a lot of homes. The earth continues to spin into the sun.
Last night we toasted to my dad's memory with these. My Dad had a sweet tooth -- his favorite cocktails were the Amaretto Sour and the Mojito -- I think he would have enjoyed this aromatic spring cocktail. I prefer it without creme de violette, but you could float a barspoon of it on top if you want.
MEYER LEMON AVIATION
1 1/2 ounces gin (I like Millers or Junipero)
1 ounce fresh-squeezed Meyer lemon juice
1/2 ounce Maraschino
two pieces of Meyer lemon peel
brandied cherry (preferably Luxardo)
Shake all ingredients very well over ice and strain into chilled martini glass. Squeeze both lemon twists over the surface of the drink to express oil. Rub them around rim of glass and discard. Garnish with a cherry.
SIXTY-TWO THINGS I WILL REMEMBER ABOUT MY DAD (ONE FOR EACH YEAR)
1) He was tall
2) He was handsome
3) He had beautiful thick, wavy hair
4) His eyes squinted when he smiled
5) His belly shook when he laughed
6) He had a wonderful mind
7) He had a strong sense of justice
8) He was always reading
9) He was sensitive to the beauty of architecture
10) He always pulled his weight
11) We grew up apart from him, but he always remembered our birthdays and sent wonderful gifts at Christmas
12) My heart would lift up every time I saw his beautiful handwriting on the outside of an envelope
13) He was happiest when he was making Donna happy. When he visited me in NY, he and I went to Bloomingdales together to shop for her. He bought a rust-colored silk dress, and he was so proud of that dress and so in love that he almost seemed like a teenager buying his girl an engagement ring
14) He went with Donna to all her chemo sessions, and the doctor said most husbands come to the first session and then stop coming
15) He had a deep faith in God
16) He had an intellectual quest for a deeper knowledge of God
17) His religion had a ripple effect on everyone around him, because he strived to let it guide his actions.
18) He was humble
19) Like all the Demings, he loved to play cards
20) He strode forward boldly into the Internet age
21) When I visited him at his office as a little girl, we made paper helicopters and launched them out the window of the building
22) When I visited him at his office as a slightly older girl, I wrote “Hi Dad” on his office board. He never erased it.
23) He loved the blues
24) He was always excited about some new band he had found online
25) He was accepting of people of all races and backgrounds
26) He taught me how to make perfect guacamole
27) The secret ingredient was cumin
28) When we went out to eat, he always wanted to share everything so he could get the most out of the meal
29) When Granny, Donna, Dad, Uncle Dave, my brother, and I went to Joe T Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant in Fort Worth, Dad let me have a sip of his margarita. It was the most delicious thing I had ever had and made me look forward to growing up and getting to drink things like that every day
30) For his sixtieth birthday, I got him a bottle of Patron and some Grand Marnier so he could make margaritas at home.
31) Once, when I reminisced to him about the meal we shared at Joe T’s, he said, “That was the best day of my life.”
32) When my father told me that, it made me cry. I realized, maybe for the first time, how much our time together meant to him. I hadn’t ever really understood this.
33) I tried to spend more time with him after that, but I deeply regret not spending more.
34) He lived to see both his children in loving relationships, and he gave our unions his blessing, even if he didn’t live to see my brother’s wedding to Nicole, whom my father adored
35) He gave wonderful hugs
36) He mellowed with age like a fine wine
37) When he retired he was thinking about buying an RV and driving across the country with Donna
38) He wanted to start a blog.
39) He and Donna used to have a wonderful dog named Lady
40) They had been thinking of buying another one, perhaps a Sheltie, and I talked to breeders in Oklahoma City about surprising them with one for Christmas last year, but I decided maybe that would be too big of a surprise, but Donna should consider this a warning about possible Shelties to come
41) He looked sharp in a suit
42) He was coming around to the idea of being a rancher
43) He loved hanging out with Janet, Nancy, and Lewis
44) When a friend’s two-year-old boy knocked over a huge standing mirror in my home, sending broken glass everywhere, all of us were too shocked to do anything, except for my father. He got up, strode over to the little boy, and lifted him out of harm’s way, then handed him silently to the mother. To me, this action was the purest expression of my father’s personality.
45) He was loyal
46) He understood the sacred quality of silence
47) He grew great vegetables
48) He took my bizarre succession of boyfriends in stride, accepting them the way one might accept bewildering weather patterns
49) He ended every phone call with “I love you”
50) He had great legs
51) He had strong arms
52) He had a cute accent, even though he thought I was the one with the accent
53) He did yoga
54) He loved women, even though he really only had eyes for one woman. When he came over to visit NY by himself, I had a dinner party and sat him in between my two best girlfriends. At one point I looked over at him and he was blissed out, with a glass of wine in his hand and a pretty girl on either side of him listening to his stories
55) He had a wonderful trip to New Orleans with Donna and I’ve never heard him so happy as when he called me from there.
56) He loved fantasy baseball and had a proprietary formula for calculating players’ values
57) I refused to argue about politics with him, which I claimed was because I wanted to keep the peace between us, but really it was because I knew I would lose
58) He never complained, even when we spoke on the phone after his surgery and I knew he was in a lot of pain
59) He faced the changes of life with equanimity
60) When I went to his bookshelf a few days after he died and opened his copy of Leaves of Grass, I found the following underlined:
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and the crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, reexamine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body…He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured…He shall go directly to the creation
61) He was my father and I will never get another
62) Is not enough
