2.11 Canned Peas 1955

1955 • San Francisco ~ My dad taught me to sew on a button, how to thread the needle and not make the thread too long because it would knot itself and catch in the fabric. He showed me how to wrap the white thread around the end of my finger and pull my finger and the thread through in one motion, knotting two ends of the doubled thread at the same time. Even though he showed me how to be careful not to hold my index finger over a four-holed white button so I wouldn’t stab myself with the needle coming through from underneath, I always drew blood. Then he showed me how to use a thimble. He showed me how to put a straight pin across the button and sew over it so the looped thread wouldn’t make the button too tight, to sew in one hole and out the other six times, then to knot it on the back side of the fabric. A perfect button!

He taught me to iron his white dress shirts. I had to kneel on a chair to reach the makeshift rickety ironing board. I mostly ironed the backs because his shirts were too big and they kept falling off. He did the rest. I liked watching him iron, breathing in the smell of the starch and the scorched ironing-board cover.

We walked to the butcher shop after work to pick out special double-cut lamb chops. Dad made dinner: the most delicious meat, perfectly cooked, rare and juicy, with canned new potatoes which I liked even though they had this weird rubber feeling, and canned green peas, which I hated. Just the smell of them made me gag. He made me eat them anyway, saying they were good for me. It’s easy to hide canned peas in a glass of milk; they’re like lead. I liked canned spinach better, even though it tasted metallic. When they were in season, we had fresh steamed artichokes or asparagus dipped in mayonnaise, which were our favorites, and the best, the very best, fresh cracked crab from Fisherman’s Wharf with thick slices of sourdough French bread.

We held hands on the way to the Russian restaurant down near the panhandle where we ate piroshkis and bowls of borscht with a glob of sour cream floating on the top. I loved Dad’s huge hands with ropey blue veins and long fingers with clean, clipped nails. One day I put my six-year-old hand in his pocket to be closer to him; he jerked it out and ordered me never to do that again. I didn’t understand, nor did I ask. I knew by the look on his face and tone of his voice and the pace of his walk I’d done something wrong. He told me we couldn’t hold hands anymore either, that I was too old now. My heart sank, and I sorely feared that meant no more butterfly kisses either.

On a day while walking with him to work, we were laughing and telling knock-knock jokes. I told him a riddle with the word nookie; he didn’t laugh. He snapped, “don’t you ever use that word again!” I knew not to ask him what it meant either.

The hardest thing about visiting Dad was leaving him. I didn’t want to say goodbye, to feel as if I was being sent away. I had such a need to be wanted. I loved him, I knew he loved me, and I knew Mom didn’t. When it was time to go, it was with a lump in my throat and an ache in my chest. The catch of my breath turned to huge sobs; I couldn’t see or breathe. I couldn’t find anything wrong with me, but there must have been something. Why else wouldn’t he let me stay?

to be continued…

© 2018. Catherine Sevenau.
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