[This is another of several stories I intend to post from now through Christmas or perhaps New Year's. This one first appeared in my Christmas Memories from Seven to Seventy, available in paperback from Amazon.com.]
The menu item caught my eye: Pumpkin soup. It had been a long time since I had eaten pumpkin soup.
At that earlier time – during a Christmas season – Russell was in first or second grade, Jonathan was pre-school.
Now the “boys” were adults in the working world. Jonathan had just gotten married. We were in Chicago for the first get-together of his and Vicky’s families.
I wasn’t going to call attention to the pumpkin soup listing on the menu because that earlier encounter with the soup hadn’t gone quite the way I’d planned.
That earlier pumpkin soup episode was one I hoped no one would recall.
It happened when Pansy had a death in her family near the holidays, so she left the boys in my care in Birmingham for a few days while she went by plane to the funeral in North Carolina.
I don’t remember a great deal about getting the boys up and ready for school or retrieving them in the afternoon. About all I remember of those days as Mr. Mom was that it fell my lot to prepare food for the three of us.
The primary weapon in my cooking arsenal was, and still is, a can opener. If a cooking problem can’t be solved with that weaponry, forget it. So, with opener at the ready, as I looked in the cupboard, my eye fell on a can of pumpkin.
On the label was a recipe for pumpkin soup. Intended as a dessert. This would be an interesting and different ending for supper, so I lurched into action, using the entire can of pumpkin, enough for a family of eight.
My soup turned out smooth and creamy, a chilled liquefied version of Everybody’s Thanksgiving Favorite. I love pumpkin pie for the holidays. I thought the boys did too. So the three of us would enjoy the pumpkin soup, each of us having at least two servings. Not a lot left over at the end of the meal.
It didn’t turn out quite that way.
After a meal of canned veggies and canned meat, I brought out my dessert from a can, sure it would be the piéce de résistance. Instead, it was a plain piece of resistance.
After clearing the table and carrying the dishes to the sink, I reentered, triumphantly bearing the soup and setting a bowl before each boy.
With equally curious looks and mouths turned down in frowns, Russell and Jonathan asked as one, “What is THAT?”
“Pumpkin soup!” I said happily.
“What?”
“Pumpkin soup!” I said again, this time with less certainty.
“Do we have any ice cream?” Russell asked.
“Fellows,” I said, with a growing defensiveness. “This is pumpkin soup. A special holiday dessert.”
“Soup isn’t for dessert, Dad,” Russell said.
“This one is!” I said. “Try it this once. You might change your mind.”
“What kind of ice cream is in the fridge?” Jonathan asked.
To cut to the chase: neither boy would touch the stuff. I begged. I pled. I threatened. I probably cried genuine tears. To no avail.
They may have liked pumpkin pie, but pumpkin soup? I was left with the whole pot of soup all to myself. It was sweet and tasty, but much of the anticipated enjoyment faded, since I had no one to
share it with.
I don’t remember pumpkin soup ever being mentioned again in our family until we were all in that restaurant in Chicago years later. I had assumed this dark episode was dead and buried. Then, as we
sat with menus in hand, I saw under appetizers the listing for pumpkin soup. I intended to maintain a dignified silence and quietly order a cup.
But soup silence was not to be. Russell also saw the menu listing, and he remembered the pumpkin soup episode from Holiday Long Past.
“Dad,” Russell said with a mischievous grin and a twinkle in his eyes. “Did you see they have pumpkin soup on the menu?”
“Yeah, Russell” I said, trying to sound indifferent. “I noticed that.”
“Are you going to get some pumpkin soup, then?”
It seemed that all conversation stopped, awaiting my answer.
“Why, yes,” I said, trying to project a boldness I did not feel.
Sandy, Vicky’s mom, turned toward Pansy and asked, “Is that something your family enjoys?”
“Well…” Pansy said hesitantly.
I wasn’t sure how much she remembered about the earlier notorious incident. After she returned home, I must have shared something of my feeling of defeat over the rejected soup.
Russell jumped in, recounting, “Dad fixed some pumpkin soup one time while Mom was away.”
“Did you like it?” Vicky’s dad, Dave, wanted to know.
“No,” Russell said, still grinning. “Not really.”
Vicky asked Jonathan, “Did you like it?”
“I don’t remember it at all,” Jonathan said with a shrug.
“Surely you both tried it after your dad went to the trouble of fixing it,” Sandy pled.
Russell shook his head: “No. Neither of us took the first sip. I don’t know what Dad did with it. He may have poured it out.”
“I did no such thing!” I retorted. “I ate it all by the time Mom got back home. It was good! Why don’t all of you try some tonight?”
No such luck.
Not that I really expected it. Neither of our sons was any more interested in sampling this delicacy in adulthood than he had been in childhood. Likewise Pansy or Vicky or her parents, or her sister or brother or his girl friend.
When the appetizers were brought out, people asked questions:
“Are you really going to eat that?”
“Did you order to be a good sport?”
I answered by reaching for my soup spoon and taking the first taste.
“How does it compare?”
“It’s good,” I said. “But it’s different.”
Sandy seemed the most interested: “How is it different?”
“Well, mine was pureed. This soup tonight has small chunks of pumpkin. Mine was sweeter. It was a dessert.”
Not wanting to offend anyone, I added, “This is good, but mine was better.”
Because no one else ate pumpkin soup either that night or in antiquity, no one could argue with my judgment call.
The soup was followed by a hearty meal and a pleasant, leisurely evening as our newly-connected families began to get acquainted.
The soup proved to be an interesting momentary topic. Then the conversation moved on. No more was said about it, even as with the first pumpkin soup.
Afterward, the soup story set me wondering:
What other childhood incidents have my sons put on cold storage . . . waiting for the right prompt to bring them out for further discussion?
A quarter century later, are their memories carrying greater significance than pumpkin soup, waiting to be brought out?
Issues of diet?
Tests of will?
Times when they sought fatherly encouragement but were rebuffed?
Times when fatherly affection was offered but they didn’t quite know how to respond?
With my sons in Chicago and New York and with me in South Carolina, those opportune moments are few and far between.
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