Double duty

Father’s Day was yesterday. We had an unusual celebration. It was just my husband and I. He had just returned from a 4-day trip with old childhood buddies. He said he was still too full from the big meals on his trip to enjoy our traditional eggs Benedict breakfast for Father’s Day. Evening came around and a storm rolled in, ruining our plans for grilling the huge strip steak I planned to serve him. We will stretch out the celebration—steak tonight, eggs Benedict tomorrow morning. We never get hung up about the actual day to celebrate a holiday. We once celebrated Thanksgiving on Friday because we were out late partying the night before!

Our sons had unconventional celebrations for Father’s Day too. Our younger son is on vacation with his family in the Florida panhandle this week. His daughter took two friends along. They are sharing a house with another family—mom, dad, son and two of his friends. Add my daughter-in-law and grandson to the mix and you have a full house. My son grilled steaks last night for all of them.

Our older son spent the day alone yesterday with his disabled daughter. He fixed himself some blackened fish. It was this son that got me thinking about single parents and how they have to be both mom and dad. He’s incredible at both roles and should be doubly celebrated.

My mother-in-law was also a single parent when I met her. She was widowed at age 46 and never remarried. She worked as an executive secretary. Thanks to hard work and smart investments she put my husband through MIT and his brother through Vanderbilt. She worked well into her 70s.

Whenever I think about her, I remember her in the kitchen. She was a great cook and taught me a lot as a newlywed. She lived a few miles from us after she retired and had us over for dinner a couple times a month. Each meal was a feast that often took her days to prepare. She catered to everyone’s preferences. A typical meal at her house might consist of shrimp cocktail and a layered Mexican dip, Wiener schnitzel or meatballs and marinara, several vegetables, a relish tray, good bread and two desserts. I loved her chocolate pie. She also made personalized side salads that might contain greens, hearts of palm, artichoke hearts, tomatoes, black olives, anchovies and croutons, depending on what each of us liked. She kept a bucket of frozen margaritas in the freezer for my husband and served my favorite wines. She was so focused on pleasing her family that she once called the cook at a local restaurant to ask him how he prepared the chicken fried steak that my younger son liked. I’ve never been as full as I was when I left her house after one of her dinners no matter how hard I tried to pace myself.

Family celebrations like Father’s Day or Mother’s Day or birthdays are just formal reasons to gather together to eat, share stories and laugh. In between holidays we look for other times to get together. I made dinner every Saturday and Sunday this winter in Arizona for our older son and I enjoyed lots of meals at my brother and sister-in-law’s house. Every meal was a celebration. I’ll toast my husband tonight and wish him a “Happy Father’s Day” again. I will think of the strength of my mother-in-law and my older son and toast them too. I think that we all need to celebrate family as often as we can—even on ordinary Mondays like today.