The Perfect Gift for Papa

Every  year when I was a kid, my mother would shop desperately  for a birthday gift for her father. “He wants a shirt,” she’d say, her brow furrowed with worry. “It has to have two pockets. Last year I bought him a shirt with only one breast pocket, and he said he couldn’t wear it. He needs two pockets.” She’d scour the department stores and, most especially, the very expensive men’s clothing stores, in her search for the perfect shirt for Papa. Finally, she would find an unreasonably priced shirt with reasonable fabric, perhaps a subtle print, and sporting two breast pockets. Success!

    Or so it seemed, until Papa received the gift. “Hmmmm,” he’d say.

    “What’s wrong, Papa?” she’d ask.

    “Nothing, nothing,” he’d answer, “only the pockets are small. I don’t wear pockets for decoration! I need room to put things in them. There’s not any room to put my pencils and notes in these pockets!”

    Should my mother be lucky enough to find a shirt with the right sized pockets, you can be sure that Papa would find the sleeves were too long, too wide, too narrow, with the wrong kind of cuff, or perhaps the problem was with the collar.

    Some years, she’d try to please him with books, which on the surface seemed a safe choice. Papa loved to read. She’d look for titles that had been favorably reviewed and that dealt with a favorite subject of his: the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson, horse racing, Abraham Lincoln, politics.

    “Hmmmm,” Papa would say. “Nothing new in it.” Or, rolling his eyes, “Hmmmm. This fellow worked for Eisenhower!”  Or, “I’m not sure who he was really writing about, but it certainly wasn’t Jefferson.” Or, “I wonder if this fellow has ever had an original thought.”

    My mother despaired of finding a gift that would please her father.

    As an adult, I had my own struggle to find a satisfactory gift for Papa.

    One of my first efforts was inspired by Papa’s story of his childhood breakfasts.

    “My mother wanted to raise her children as Americans,” he told me. “When she came to this country from Italy, she asked a neighbor woman, ‘What do people feed children for breakfast in America?’

    “’We feed them oatmeal and cocoa for breakfast,’ the woman said.

    “And that’s what my mother did. We had oatmeal for breakfast almost every day.     “Ah, but when my father found out what we were eating for breakfast, he was angry. He told her he didn’t come to this country to have his children eat something that was fit only for horses! But she told him, that’s what American children eat, and she prevailed.

    “It wasn’t the kind of oatmeal we get in the store now. It was very rough in texture; I can’t really describe it otherwise. Oh, I loved it though! I’ve looked for it, but I’ve never been able to find oatmeal like that again!”

    
    I took up the search for rough textured oatmeal for Papa. On one visit, I brought him McCann’s Steel Cut Irish Oatmeal. Papa looked skeptical. “We can try it out for breakfast tomorrow,” he said.

    “But, Pat,” Eva said, “I made bread to have for toast with bacon and eggs this weekend!”

    “Then I’ll try the oatmeal Monday,” he said. “Still, I have my doubts.”

    When I next called, Papa informed me, “That oatmeal you brought – it was good for what it was, but it wasn’t at all like the oatmeal my mother used. Best thing in the world! Never since had anything like it! You just can’t get it anymore.”

    I gave up on oatmeal, but the next thing I tried was cookies, also because of one of Papa’s stories: “We had a bakery just across the street from us when I was a boy,” he said. “Sometimes my mother would buy day-old cookies there. It was the cheapest kind of cookie they sold – just a plain sugar cookie. Sometimes what she bought was just a bag of broken pieces. But she’d put those broken pieces into our bowls, and pour our hot cocoa over them. My sister and I would eat them with spoons for our breakfast as a treat. They were cheap and plain, but I’ve never had a better cookie in my life. You just can’t find cookies like that anymore!”

     I consulted a variety of cook books, settled on a recipe and brought homemade cookies when I returned for a visit. Eva was excited. “What kind?” she asked.

    “Butter cookies,” I answered.

    She eagerly opened the tin. “There’s no icing,” she announced, her disappointment clear.

    “I was trying to make a plain cookie, like the ones Papa’s mother bought at the bakery,” I said.

    “I don’t like plain things,” Eva said.

    Papa grabbed the tin from Eva’s hands, pulled out a cookie and took a bite. “Hmmm.” He rendered his verdict: “It’s a good cookie, but it’s not at all like those cookies my mother got us. These taste of butter. They’re rich. My mother bought cheap cookies, the cheapest cookies they made. But they were delicious! Best  cookies I ever ate!”

    Papa ate my disappointing cookies nonetheless.

    On other visits, I brought other cookie experiments  from a variety of recipes I’d tried – butter cookies, sugar cookies, dropped, rolled, or otherwise shaped, some plain, with a few adorned with icing or sprinkles for Eva – but no luck. I should have realized that nothing could ever match Papa’s early memories of his family, but I was a slow learner.

    I was intrigued when I read a review on Ethnic at Large, a memoir by Jerre Mangione, who had also grown up the son of Italian immigrants. Although Mangione was a younger man, I thought Papa would find in the book parallels to his own life. I read a good bit of it, and I began to think I had found the perfect birthday gift for Papa.

    When I presented it to him that January, Papa carefully unfolded the wrapping paper.

     “What is it, Pat?” Eva asked.

    “Hmmmm,” he said, turning the book over, studying the jacket, before opening it and paging through. “Interesting. Thank you, thank you.” He pulled my face closer for a kiss, and I was glad he liked my choice of book.

    When we retired late that evening, Papa took up his new book and announced that he wasn’t tired yet and was going to read. It turned out that he stayed up almost all night reading his new book.

    The next morning at breakfast, he said, “Well, I finished that book you gave me.”

    “What did you think?” I asked.

    “It had its points,” Papa allowed. “But there was too much talk about sex.”

    “About sex?” I asked, wondering if we were talking about the same book.

    “It’s the fashion these days,” Papa said. “No matter what the book is about, people can’t write a book without talking about sex. And, really, if you think about it, there is nothing – ”

    “Don’t start, Pat,” Eva warned.

    “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, as ridiculous as the act of two people having intercourse. Nothing whatsoever!”

    “Oh, stop that, Pat! There is nothing wrong with sex!”

    “I didn’t say that there is anything wrong with it,” Papa said. “We’re drawn by it. We enjoy it. We long for it. And some damn fools want to write about it. But, still, there is nothing in the world that looks so ridiculous as two people engaged in the sexual act! Think about it! The positions we take!”

    “How can you say that?” Eva demanded. “What’s ridiculous about it?”

    “What’s ridiculous about it?” he roared.

    As they dug in with their argument, I realized that it might be better to leave Papa’s boyhood memories out of it when I tried to find a gift that he might actually like.

    While out shopping with a friend one time, I unexpectedly came across an item that had Papa written all over it  – a mug, the perfect size for his coffee, and it was emblazoned with the sentence, “There are two sides to every argument – mine, and the wrong one.”  I bought it, and a pretty cup and saucer for Eva too. This time I was certain: I had found the perfect gifts!

    On my next trip to Maryland, I surprised them with small wrapped packages. Eva crowed with delight at her cup and saucer, sniffling with joy. Papa pulled his mug from its box and read it aloud, a hint of a smile playing at his lips. “It’s almost perfect,” he said, getting up from the table. “I need a marker so I can fix it.” He rummaged through a kitchen drawer, and came up with a fine point permanent marker, carrying it back to the kitchen table, where he sat and edited his mug.

    “What are you doing, Pat?” Eva asked.

    “You’ll see. You’ll see,” he said.

    Finally, he waved it in front of her face, while reciting to her the amended mug message: “There are two sides to every issue – mine, and the wrong one – Eva’s!”

    Apparently, it hadn’t been perfect, but, at last, I had found an almost perfect gift for Papa.

    After Papa’s birthday, my mother mentioned to me that he once again had found fault with the gift she gave him. “He wanted a sweater. He said it should be a cardigan, and he wanted side pockets in it. I looked and looked and looked, and finally found one for him in his size. It had everything he asked for, but now he says the sleeves are too long!”

    “Of course the sleeves are too long,” I said. “They don’t make men’s sweaters to fit men who are five feet tall.”

    “I think he hates it,” she said. “He has to roll up the sleeves.”

    “He rolls up the sleeves on all his sweaters,” I said.

    “Well, he doesn’t sound happy about it. He never likes the gifts I give him! They’re never right.”

    “Mum, I don’t think there’s such a thing as a gift that’s right for Papa. He likes getting gifts, but he likes complaining about them even more than he likes the gift itself.”

    “Maybe,” she said.

    I told her about the book I had given him. “Don’t feel hurt. Nothing is ever exactly right for Papa.”

    I was wrong, though.

    Accustomed to the evening and Sunday morning rituals of watching and arguing through the newscasts and political discussion on the small television in their kitchen, I discovered to my surprise that Papa and Eva were regular viewers of  another program. Not only were they fans of “The Muppet Show;” they actually ceased arguing for the entire program, and they were eager for me to join the merriment.

    “Don’t you just love Kermit!” Eva exclaimed. “He’s so bashful!”

    “Miss Piggy’s batting her eyelashes again,” Papa pointed out. “He doesn’t stand a chance against her.”

    “Aren’t they darling!” Eva said. “They’re so funny!”

    “And wait till you see those two fellows who sit in the audience and complain!” Papa added. “I love the two of them!”

     “Don’t forget that darling dog!” Eva said. “We love all the Muppets!”

    On a subsequent shopping excursion, I found something that I thought might bring them a chuckle. Next visit, I presented them with the gift.

    “Oh, look, Pat!” Eva began to cry as she opened the small box.
 
    Papa took it in his hand and beamed. “Will  you look at that! It’s a soap in the shape of Kermit the Frog!”

    “Green soap,” Eva said, sniffling. “Oh, look at the little paddle Kermit’s holding!”

    “Don’t cry, darling.”

    “I can’t help it, Pat!”

    “Look at his mouth, darling. He looks like he’s singing!”

    “Oh, I just love it so!” Eva exclaimed.

    “It’s perfect,” Papa said. “Perfect!”

    Kermit took up permanent residence, and Papa never allowed anyone to wash with him. On all my visits thereafter, I’d step into their bathroom, as always bedecked with bright orange rugs and mats, and see on top of the sink, nestled in a dish, Kermit the Soap.

    For once in my life, I had found a perfect gift for Papa.


Biographical Note: Kate Lydon is a storyteller, writer and editor who at times hires out as an adjunct professor. She grew up along the rocky coast of Massachusetts, but has lived most of her life amid the trees of Pennsylvania.   Daughter of a man who made the best donuts in the world and a woman who acted out Macbeth and read poetry for her children, Kate is the oldest of five, and thus is prone to giving advice. However, her husband, two children, two cats and one dog, independent souls all, pay scant attention, and so she writes. Kate’s satirical murder mystery, Off Center, is now available through Amazon’s Kindle Store. She is currently working on another novel, as well as a book of stories about visits her grandparents Papa and Eva.  See the Author Index for Prose L-Z  and the Author Index for Poetry for more of  Kate's writing.