Esquire - Eating with My Father

Nice article. Most men have had some struggle in their relationships with their fathers, if they had a relationship at all. I didn't get to know my dad until three years before he died, and our conversations, good or bad, hard or easy, were always over a game of horseshoes, not food.

Eating with My Father

Like all fathers and sons, we had tough talks. For some reason, they were easier over lunch.

By Tom Chiarella

Around the house, my dad was a brooding, intense guy. He glared. He shouted. At the end of a workday, standing at his rolltop desk, holding a sheaf of bills, looking over his shoulder at some disturbance in the living room, he flat-out scared me. But I loved eating with my dad. I would tell him anything when we ate. The guy was clear-eyed and wise over a bowl of soup.

During high school, we ate every Saturday at a restaurant high atop an office tower in Rochester, New York. I had to get there first, pick a booth by a north-facing window, leave room for him to sit on the left, and order two Tabs with lemon. Every major conversation I had with the guy during those years occurred in that booth, over lunch. I had quit football suddenly. I'd banged up the car. I'd been in a fight. I'd cashed out my savings bonds without telling him. I'd paid for a girlfriend's abortion. Through all this we ate. In this way, we got through it. Food filled the silences. Onion soup. Escarole and beans. New potatoes flecked with skin. Spinach — always spinach. T-bones. Hard rolls. French fries with grilled onions. Over time, my father told me his share, too: that he'd been married once before, that his new boss had refused to pay him for nearly a year, that his business seemed to be at an end. At these times, I could see that he was eating with a purpose: He ate like he meant it.

He had his quirks — he liked lemon wedges with his salad, he ate the tails of cooked shrimp, he despised the way I used butter — but he was not overly concerned with the rituals or compulsions of food. When he allowed himself to gravitate toward the comfort foods of an immigrant's childhood — tripe, chicken gizzards, even bone marrow — he amazed me. A proffered forkful of food from my dad was his way of teaching. He wanted me to try things, to open myself up beyond cheeseburgers and tuna melts. And I gave it a shot, because there in that booth with the food in front of us, my dad could be trusted. When we were eating, I discovered him to be more than what I thought he was: braver, tougher, more generous, and more exotic than anyone I knew. When he ate, I wanted to be him.

I'm almost fifty now. The last time I ate with my dad, he was living in a nursing home outside Albany. We'd sat in a big room, fluorescents and linoleum, full of skeletons four to a table eating tapioca out of paper cups. He was still brave about the food, although for different reasons. It was a struggle just to eat, for one thing — he did the best he could with a fork, and I fed him the rest. And the food wasn't that good, of course, though he seemed to like the cheesecake. Despite how it sounds, none of this was particularly sad, except that now he didn't talk while he ate. He couldn't. I tried talking for a while, but I could see it stressed him. So then I was quiet. Yes, that part was sad. My father had forgotten what food was for — what he and I used it for — and that was unbearable. Eventually, though, he looked up and said, "You would like the cheesecake." I nodded and went to get a piece, offered him some off my own fork, but he didn't want any more. He said, "Go on, try it." And he was right. It was good cheesecake, better than I thought it would be. It was delicious.

"You look good when you eat," my dad said. It was something he said sometimes. "You eat like you mean it."

Tags: fathers, sons, food, friendship, Esquire, Eating with My Father, Tom Chiarella, lunch, bonding