I write hero-fathers for a lot of reasons. I like being able to explore different facets of my characters' personalities. I like watching how they juggle their various relationships and responsibilities. And, let's face it, there's something sexy and endearing about watching a tough, badass hero showing his softer side.
After much deliberation I decided to go with this scene from Dream Under the Hill. I chose it in part because it reminds me of cooking with my own father. He also loved to cook and that was one of the last things I got to do with him.
Today was Palm Sunday, and if he’d still been a good Catholic, Nick
knew he’d probably be getting ready to attend Mass. But the Church was something he’d long since
fallen away from, and, Good Catholic was a category from which he’d been
definitively barred, not just for his divorce and subsequent re-marriage, but
for a whole host of supposed sins that, according to canon, had irreparably
stained his soul. And while he would
have liked to once again experience the feelings of Absolution and Grace, that
he used to receive from the sacraments, all things considered, he didn’t miss
it very much.
What he would miss, however, were
mornings like these, cooking breakfast for his family, and sharing some quality
time with his son, Cole.
“You having fun there, buddy?” Nick
asked the little boy, smiling at the two year old’s attempts to stir the batter
for this morning’s waffles. “You’ve been
at that a while. Think it’s almost
ready?”
Cole shook his head. “Noooo,” he replied, still gamely slapping
the big wooden spoon around in the bowl; clearly intending to beat the batter
into complete submission.
“All right, we’ll give it a little
longer then,” Nick told him, chuckling to himself as he went back to tending to
the orange hollandaise sauce he was making for the eggs Benedict.
Sunday breakfast was Nick’s new
sacrament. It was also his favorite meal
to cook these days, which was odd, considering the one item he’d always
considered his signature dish—meatballs––wasn’t usually thought of as a
breakfast staple. However, since his
family was, once again, eating Sunday dinner at Lucy’s house, more often than
not, breakfast had become his one chance to really cut loose.
Not that his breakfasts were always
as elaborate as this morning’s meal, but today was special. It was his forty-fifth birthday, and he felt
like celebrating.
He also felt like staying home,
drawing the day out, enjoying the time with his family and friends. Which was partly why, when Sinead had invited
them all to the inn for breakfast, he’d declined. Much as he loved his friend and appreciated
her cooking, he didn’t want to go anywhere today.
The impulse surprised him. He’d realized only recently that he’d finally
begun to think of this house as home.
After almost
three years, it was long overdue. It was
high time he learned to relax into his new life, to accept that fate had handed
him a second chance, to stop worrying that it might all be taken away again.
He took the hollandaise off the
heat, checked on the home fries warming in the oven, and then took a minute to
stir the tomato sauce simmering on the back of the stove.
The aroma, when he lifted the cover
off the pot, wafted him back to his own childhood, and made him happier than
ever to be spending this time in the kitchen with his own son. “Does that smell good, Cole?” he asked.
The little boy nodded and mumbled,
“Yeshh,” but absently, as he continued to concentrate on his work.
At this rate those waffles might
end up being part of Monday’s breakfast. “You know you can stop that now, if
you want,” Nick suggested, but as he half expected, Cole shook his head
stubbornly. “All right, well, let me
know if you get tired.”
The rest of breakfast was either
warming in the oven or chilling in the fridge––less the eggs, of course, which
he’d poach while the waffles cooked––leaving Nick with nothing to do but
contemplate dinner.
After breakfast, he’d put the
lemon-garlic chicken in the oven, make the meatballs, and stuff the
manicotti. Once all of that was
accomplished, there was only kale to sauté, eggplant to fry and a huge
antipasto salad platter to assemble, with olives, artichokes and marinated
mushrooms, roasted peppers and zucchini, a variety of cheeses, smoked meats,
capers, anchovies, tuna––and anything else he could think of.
Lucy had offered to make the
antipasto as part of her contribution to the meal, but again he’d
declined. It was the first dish he’d
been allowed to ‘cook’ as a boy helping his parents in the kitchen, and he’d
retained a special fondness for it.
Maybe Cole would like to help him
with that, too, he thought, smiling as he turned to his son again. “Okay, why don’t you give me that, now,
Cole,” he said, attempting to gently pry the bowl of batter away from him.
Cole’s eyes narrowed. From the angry set of his chin and the way he
was scowling, Nick was pretty sure he was getting ready to pitch a tantrum.
Quickly, he took the pan of home
fries from the oven and spooned a few of them onto a plate. “Here, try these potatoes. Tell me if they’re good.”
For an instant, Cole’s eyes
narrowed even more, but then he smiled, reaching eagerly for the plate in
Nick’s hand. Nick smiled, too. Despite his own mother’s insistence that Cole
was the image of Nick as a baby, Nick didn’t think it was an easy call to
make. It was hard to determine which of
his parents Cole most resembled. Until he smiled, and then it was no contest. He was Scout all over, when he smiled.
You can read more about the Oberon series HERE
