Good Enough
I picked up the greasy old frying pan, blackened all over and beyond help from years of hot bacon and butter. Dropping it on the counter, the pan careened in two full three-sixties before coming to a wobbly stop like a child’s toy top. Curious, I picked it up again and held it at eye level and smiled, spotting the one-inch center circle of that nine-inch battered pan that actually made contact with the electric burner as my father cooked his every-other day eggs and bacon. In my mind, I heard his voice saying, “It’s good enough!”
Maybe it’s the pandemic that has me thinking more often of my dad’s frying pan and of him. One winter, when he was in the Wuesthoff Hospital in Rockledge, Florida for heart surgery, I went to his Motel 6 room to pack up the two little suitcases he’d brought for a two-month stay. I suddenly realized that he had spent six weeks there sitting in the middle of the room each night in a hard, straight-backed chair, using his cooler for a footrest, the better to see his 19” TV. Then, after looking through his shirts, I went to Wal-Mart and bought a few new ones. I put his rattiest old shirts in the bottom of his suitcase, with a note on top of them suggesting that they never see the light of day again except for the day he burned them!
The next year, Gary and I took a recliner and a 37” TV to Motel 6 for him. Just like with the new shirts, he was grateful, but my sense was and is that it didn’t matter too much to him. The “things’” in his life were good enough. What did matter? Sitting on his porch on Sugar Hill looking out at Round Top Mountain; a generous piece of Allyson’s apple pie; the 30-06 in his car every November; deer steak and pan cakes at Suky’s; a mostly friendly game of Phase 10 with his sisters; a card or call from his grandson, Tyler; Christmas Eve at our house.
Simple pleasures. While I’ll never lead the Spartan life of my father’s (I like my pans flat and my shirts stain-free!), I’ve spent these crazy stay-at-home days of 2020 sorting out what really matters to me and what my good enoughs are – life’s lesson learned from an old frying pan and a wise old man.