Dear Dad: Wit & Wisdom & Gatorade—Part 2

The thing about suffering through a cold while pregnant is that medications masking the symptoms are off limits. So I turned to some of my many maternal media sources for coping advice. One of them, a recent acquisition called Mothering magazine, recommends ginger tea as a natural remedy for coughs and colds. Not ginger tea from a bag—pre-packaged dried leaves you simply steep in hot water—but fresh ginger root, thinly sliced, boiled in water and strained before drinking. Surely going to all that trouble should yield some powerful results.

So, feeling desperate for relief (I was somewhere between “Head hurt so badly I thought perhaps I should be hospitalized” and “Sleep is impossible; life is a fog”), last night I called my dad at his part-time grocery gig. I asked him to drop off some ginger root on his way home from work. Dad’s been stocking shelves at a nearby W store since retiring as a music teacher 14 years ago. Would you believe that, in all that time, no one had ever asked him to help them find some ginger root?

As I tried to brainstorm with him by cell phone (foggy brain and all) about where the ginger root might be found in the grocery store, my mind flashed back to 11^th grade, one hazy afternoon in late May at the Seneca Falls Pageant of Bands. I was a drum major, one of the kids flailing her arms in front of the uniformed marching musicians (pretending to be conducting, when really it was the bass drummer running the show). Shortly before the pageant parade, my pantyhose ripped. I urgently needed a new pair. My munificent father, known for bending over backwards to help his children (then and now), offered to go to the store for some stockings. I needed white—plain white pantyhose, size B. He jogged off to the nearest retailer of such goods in a small town. (This story pre-dates the Walmart boom, so it was probably a drugstore he sought out.)

Not long later, Dad dutifully returned, bearing an ice-cold beverage (I’m sure I’ve mentioned how important our hydration is to him) and a bulging plastic sack. He looked harangued. Shaking his head, he explained apologetically: “I couldn’t find plain white. There was ivory, off-white, something called bare bisque…?” He proffered the bag sheepishly. He had done his best.

Looking back, I realize how unreasonable it was for me to expect the poor man to know what to buy under such circumstances: Too many options, unfamiliar circumstances, time crunch. What a hassle! So he bought 3 pairs, hoping 1 would suit my need, and he stuck to something he knew: Gatorade. In retrospect, I also realize I probably hadn’t needed the stockings at all. My skirt was long and full; maybe 3 inches of calf showed between the bottom of the skirt and the top of my boots; and I am “the fairest of them all” in my family—fair, as in pale.

But Dad came through with the pantyhose. And 2 decades later, he came through with the ginger root. He’s a good and generous father. Happy Birthday, Dad. And thanks.