Doreen can you please come butter my toast?

This wasn't supposed to be published until Tuesday the 18th. I guess I need more lessons from Lisa on how to postdate a post. Oh well it's here now.

This is a rerun. I have my mom's funeral to attend today but I reread this a few nights ago and decided it would be a really nice tribute to my parents on the day that we lay my mother to rest. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did writing it.



I was thinking about my father yesterday.

This May 20th will be his second birthday since he died.
I miss him.

Anyway, this last weekend while I was surrounded by family, we spent some time reminiscing about dad and some of his funny little quirks.

My father was an extremely intelligent man.

I know that a lot of people can say that about their dads, but for my father, whose measured IQ was comfortably in Genius territory, his intellect defined a large part of who he was.

Not in the way you would think though.

Dad was an engineer. He was an inventor. He was an innovator.
He had an exquisitley complex mind. And because of his mind he did things differently than most people.

He was a perfectionist.

Almost everything he did was slow and methodical. He had the infinite patience required to stick with an idea, to work it any number of ways and through countless trials and errors, to eventually come up with a mind blowing innovation.

In his early days, when I was young, he worked for Boeing.

He was happy there for a while but it was also the first of many experiences where he put in the hours and brainpower, only to see the credit for his work, taken by his superiors.

He did NOT have a mind for business.

He proved this with the times he decided to start his own companies, so as to be able to work for, and answer, only to himself.
He was too trusting and because of that he misjudged quite a few business "partners" who ended up cheating him out of his own intellectual property.

As smart as he was when it came to just plain understanding how everything in the world worked, and how to manipulate it to his will, he could be pretty clueless when it came to everyday life.

He could not escape his methodical, engineering mind. And for simple, day to day, chores and tasks, he wouldn't even try. It took him forever to do anything.
Household jobs were out of the question.

Don't think he wasn't willing.

He was more than happy to save my mom from the drudgeries of housework. The thing is, mom liked things done as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

In theory dad agreed with that. But in practice he couldn't hurry to save his life.
If he did the dishes, it would take him forever because he would break the task down into the cleaning of each individual dish.

Each cup, saucer, plate or bowl would be thoroughly gone over in such a way as to make sure it was not only clean, but as good as new. If anything happened to be found in want of even the tiniest of repairs, dishwashing would come to an abrupt halt so as to come up with the best solution for restoration.
If vacuuming carpets, dad would be so methodical that he could spend ten minutes on one square yard making sure that it was completely free of dirt, dust, loose threads, or, heaven forbid, crumbs, before moving on to the next three feet.

Needless to say, my father was very seldom pressed into simple housework.

To his credit though, he could fix anything.Our appliances lasted longer than most people's.

Eating was much the same way with my dad. He took his time. He would be at the table longer than anyone.
And no one was better at getting all of the leftover meat off of a turkey carcass.
As long as you didn't mind waiting an hour or two.

This brings me to one of the most famous "dad" traditions, our family has ever had.

Dad loved toast.

There were quite a few other foods as well that he enjoyed, but toast was probably the most iconic.
I wasn't there for the first days of my parent's marriage, having come along in approximately year number two.

But dad and his toast have become so legendary in our family that it feels like I must have been there from the very beginning.
Because from the time I was old enough to notice such things, my father always asked my mom to please come and butter his toast. I must have been at least five or six before it even occurred to me to ask why. Why on earth didn't my dad ever butter his own toast?

It turns out that there was a very good answer.

When my parents were first married, my dad was a student at the University of Washington. He was a devout Husky thereafter, his entire life.
As you know, one thing a college student is usually short on, is time.

And every morning for breakfast my dad liked to have a couple slices of toast.
The problem was, that buttering his toast, was something that took so long, that he could have eaten ten pieces of the stuff in the time it took him to butter just one piece.
Each quadrant of toast was gone over with a small pattering of butter so as to make sure that there was an equal amount spread from top to bottom.

This.

Took.

Forever!

And it is a fact that very few college professors will accept, toast buttering, as an acceptable excuse for being late to class.
So it became apparent, quite early in my parents' marriage, that if dad was to continue his education it would be vital for my mom to be the toast butterer of the family.
This is generally the accepted reason in my family why from the first years of their life together, through to the very last days of my fathers' life, that if toast was to be eaten, it would always be buttered by my mom.

Like most of these kinds of things, who would butter my fathers' toast became a rite of much greater importance than just a couple of pieces of buttered toast.

Years and years of buttered toast turned into a ritual of love.

I like to think that it became woven into a part of the security blanket of my parents relationship. It had started out as one of those mundane things that my mom did more out of necessity than love.

But as year after year passed, it became a symbol of my parents' interdependence on each other.

Other rituals eventually ended up joining the marriage, just as there were always certain little sore spots that they learned how to walk around.

After all isn't that how a good marriage works?

Two people, no matter how much they love each other, don't just automatically fall into perfect step with each other.

And for my parents, I think it was a slow love.

One that over years of shared history, of many bumps in the road and more than a few joys, grew into something so personal, so unique, so permanent that there was no force on earth that could have broken them apart.

If it all got started with a little toast buttering, then I guess it just goes to show that mighty things really do come from, what some might consider, the small and almost insignificant.

My mom mourns my dads' passing. I'm sure she feels stripped of a part of herself.
Couples who love and endure through so much come out so firmly entwined that it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

I know my mother feels this.

I also know that for over more than fifty years of marriage there were times when she probably felt like telling dad to "butter his own toast".
She would never have meant it of course.
And I like to think that for my father, there would be no joy found in the eating of a piece of toast that had been buttered by his own hand.

Now call it what you will, but for me, the thought of my mom standing there in the kitchen quickly buttering my dads toast, will always be one of the great symbols of love.

Addendum; Now that my mom has died and gone to join my father, I can only guess at how things will be for them in heaven. I doubt that there will be any more toast to be buttered, or dishes to be washed or dinners to be late for.

These were all earthly concerns after all.

I would like to think though, that before too long they will find comfortable new routines and ways to cement the partnership that they had worked on for more than fifty years.
They will no longer have to deal with the earthly constraints of ill health, unrelieved pain, more doctor visits than can easily be kept track of and yes, too many bills and not always enough money.

I imagine that they will be young and beautiful again.

Just as they were all those years ago when they first started on their journey through life together.
They had no idea at such a young time in their lives what life would hold for them. I’m sure that very little turned out as they must have pictured it so long ago when it was just the two of them.
But then that is the beauty of this life.
And I’m happy and proud that they stuck with it through to the end.

Goodbye mom and dad.