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It’s a rainy night in Parma and I’ve been cooped up for two days writing papers about feta cheese and tradition and consumption and Slow Food and theory. Early tomorrow morning my classmates and I will catch a bus to Friuli-Venezia-Giulia for a couple of days in Trieste -anybody have any good restaurant recommendations?
My writing tonight has nothing to do with my upcoming trip through. It’s because it’s Father’s Day back home and I thought you should know that my Dad- Action Hero Rod Teel- is pretty awesome.
When we were little, my mom and Kirsten and I observed Father’s Day by puffy painting a very early-90s tank top with all of the things my dad liked. I remember there being a stein of beer and a haphazard drawing that somehow expressed fly fishing. There were books and musical instruments and who knows what else. Probably doughnuts. And spaghetti. And if I were to make it now I would know to add a Tanqueray gin and tonic. I’m sure that the shirt was terribly uncomfortable in its puffy-painted plasticity, but my dad wore it anyway.
Rod Teel has had a tough couple of years that involved a career change and a hip replacement. We joke now that he’s the bionic man. He used to fly airplanes and even now more than one of my flight-averse friends calms her pre-takeoff jitters with a mantra of, “It’s gonna be fine because Rod Teel is flying this plane.” Now, he sells bread for a living and he has an award winning baguette to his name.
The day I flew to Italy I was a complete basket case. To be fair, I was pretty much a mess for the entire month before I made it here and for another month after I arrived. That morning I was packing and unpacking my two suitcases, trying to anticipate what I would need for whole year away from home. My dad came into my room every so often and asked something like, “Do you have your passport?”
“Yes, Dad”
“Well what about earplugs for the plane?”
“Um….no”
At which point he would go to his room and get some earplugs- something that I guess former pilots tend to have around.
One of the things that he insisted I take in the last few hours before heading to the airport was a little compass keychain. I had never owned a compass before and he had to show me how to use it.
In my early days in Parma I figured out that when I got disoriented in the winding city streets, all I had to to was head West and then follow the river South to get home. When Lindsey and I mapped our first bike route to school for the Cheese Wheels having that little compass saved us from being completely lost more than once.
Every time I look at my keys I think of my dad. I admire him more every day and I’m so lucky to be his kid. Being in Europe is a dream come true for me, but I can’t wait to go home, if only for the chance to sit on the porch with Rod and Louise and a few a Tanqueray and tonics.
