Dadisms

Dad tries very hard to be 'with it'. In the simplest of ways, he misses the point in a lot of conversations. Tonight he asked Laura where she got the pumpkins she had carved. (She'd really done a great job. One was a howling wolf and the other was an entire haunted house.) She said she had bought the pumpkins and had carved them using stencils. He asked what the seeds were. She said we had gotten the seeds from inside the pumpkins. He asked if they had been in a plastic bag.

A letter arrived from the investment company. About 12 years ago Dad had set up a charitable gift trust with some money he had inherited. That was a great thing about having a father who was gay and had many gay friends. Few of his friends had any children. In fact, many had been estranged from their families. They usually left everything to someone in the circle of gay friends. Over the years he had inherited a few thousand dollars here and a few there. But 12 years ago he hit the Mother Lode: the second of a gay 'couple' died and left their entire estate to Dad. This couple had lived very simply, trieying to survive off their Social Security checks, and salting away the rest of what they had ever had. Dad inherited a quarter of a million. He set up college funds for his grandchildren, an additional IRA for himself, and this charitable gift trust. The purpose of the trust was to use the increase in its value to make donations to charitable or non-profit organizations. By donating only interest earned, the trust would perpetuate itself, thus enabling us to make donations forever. Last month we donated a couple thousand to Dad's alma mater and the remainder of his annual tithe to the church. This letter was the quarterly statement. He wrote on it, "Cindy, what is this? It looks really interesting."

On the annual statement of his life insurance policy he wrote, "What is this?"

On another insurance policy, he wrote: "This looks like a come-on."

For his 90th birthday, I made Dad's favorite dishes: apricot-glazed chicken, rice pilaf, pineapple upside down cake. When we were eating it, he asked if we'd ever had it before.