Slice of Life 2026: 20 of 31- Dad

In March, Two Writing Teachers hosts the Slice of Life Story Challenge. Everyone is welcome to share writing and comment on others in this special community. 

Some days more that others, Dad is with me. Today was one of them, and I'm grateful for today and the memories. 

Maybe it was Larkin writing about the ides of the 17ths in our family. She was in kindergarten when my father fell on a 17th, but she understood the significance. 

And there was Julia's morning text, coincidentally arriving on her birthday. One of her professors invited her to present a paper which is a big deal when you're a medical student. Julia sent a picture of the official invitation, and I welled up when I saw that the topic was on tracheo-esophagus prosthetic replacement at the International Conference for Head and Neck Cancer. That was my dad's specialty. I could almost feel his high five. I could almost see him remove his thick glasses and wipe his eyes. He'd be so proud. So proud. 

And then, in our evening writing group, Lainie offered a choice of prompts, one involving recipes and one involving cars... two legendary topics when it came to my father. I've even written a post about Dad's life in cars during last year's challenge. Dad always liked to experiment with recipes. He tinkered as a winemaker, and for a while he was a bread baker. We all loved his molasses cookies. Even late in his illness, Dad would pull out the stained recipe card, make the dough, roll it, chill it, cut it, and bake it. Those were good cookies. Do I write about the day I came into the kitchen to find him watching frozen butter slam around the mixer trying to figure out why the batter wasn't creaming? It seems both relevant and irrelevant. There are days and events that are markers when a person you love is slipping away, and the day he could no longer surprise us with his famous cookies was one of them. 

Another memorable day-- a marker-- involved a car. My dad always loved cars, and maybe one day I will write some sort of anthology of car stories. (We talked about that at writing group, also!) Dad's cars had great stories. If only cars could talk! The first car I knew was a Plymouth Duster with a crocodile-textured roof. Dad liked to tell anyone who would listen (and our friends were a captive and responsive audience) about how he'd wrestled a croc in the Mississippi for that roof. We all believed him, although we couldn't really picture it. A light blue Saab, a paneled Country Squire, a sharp Sciracco, and an oversized BMW could all tell stories, but it was a red convertible that proved to be another marker. The red convertible showed up in our driveway (we lived with my parents for several years) a little over a year after we'd made the tough decision that he wasn't okay to drive. Dad didn't have many angry moments, but he often repeated his annoyance with having his car sold right out from under him. (He wasn't totally wrong about that.) We took his keys, but not his credit card. Neal from the car dealership must have been having a slow day at work because Neal took a deposit over the phone and drove that shiny car right on over to our house-- to my father's delight and our chagrin. Neal didn't get the credit for the sale, and the car returned to the lot with him. How could that have happened twenty years ago? 

I'm grateful for today and the memories. A slicer-- and I wish I could remember who it was-- wrote in a post that people are alive for as long as they're remembered. If Dad were here today, maybe we wouldn't shudder at 17ths, and he'd celebrate Julia's birthday and the awesome email she received. He'd laugh at some car memories and serve up a plate of chewy molasses cookies. 

How grateful I am for today and the memories.