Jean Eat

        “Does he eat to live or live to eat,” I quipped. I felt quite clever—a thirteen year old daughter sizing up her dad and his values. 

Food was my father’s raison d’etre. His entry into the house brought a stream of Honolulu delicacies— bags of pig’s feet, malasadas, lomi lomi salmon, ti leaves with duck eggs covered in sticky rice. The abundance suited his temperament. Corny jokes, hearty voice, expansive, big. Not obese, but full enough so that mom called him Fatso, Fat Daddy-O, Fat Fat.  

The names bounced off him and some of them landed on me—not very funny—because when you add Nya to my name, you are adding the word ‘pig’, and the family started calling me Jean Nya or Fat Jean. These names, along with cartons of ice cream, packs of candy bars, and nightly feasts, doomed me to a lifetime of food issues. My brother boycotted our restaurant gatherings rather than undergo the embarrassment of witnessing dad shovel food into a mouth kept open while he talked. 

I hated working the cash register in the family grocery store with its uniform canned goods, trays of animal flesh, a cash register jangling against a bland décor.

As my parents got older, mom tried to cut back when she heard talk about cholesterol. She steamed and broiled instead of frying. She scolded and fretted, “Stop buying all that junk. I’m sick of all this fat!” But dad was incorrigible, and as Hawaii became more cosmopolitan, he experimented with Samoan, Korean, and Vietnamese 

cuisines. 

After I moved to California, I’d return home to visit and noticed his hair turning grey; he slept more, the skin on his sleek, oily face looked paler. He still ate with gusto, but maybe not quite so much.

One day Mom called. Dad was in the hospital. I flew back home. The doctor said he was fine. He’d collapsed earlier, but no problem, two more days and he’d be out. 

      We surrounded his bed. My brother looked older and tired. Was there grey in his hair, too? He was married now and his wife and four children made the room look small. My mom sat quiet, scared. Her eyes pinned dad down, willing him to be well.

Dad pointed to a newspaper ad about DK Seafood Restaurant. “Look,” he said, “A special! A whole lobster, ten dollars apiece. Only thing,” he added wistfully, “no take out.” 

We relaxed, how bad could it be? Good ole dad, still thinking of food. 

That night we all drove down to DK’s. We gorged on lobster, told the manager about our sick dad, how he was pining for a lobster. He ended up giving us two. We picked up some rolls, cold slaw, french fries, and drove back to the hospital. We burst into his room with our bags of food and saw dad look up, surprise on his face. 

“Hey Fat Daddy-O, look what we brought—eat, eat!”

Jean’s Bio can be found by clicking Author’s Biographies on side panel.