Father's Day Tradicion

When dinner was dad's choice, on his birthday or father's day, he would choose pork tenderloin, Spanish rice and banana cream pie. He rarely wavered and, I think, preferred his mother's birthday meal to all others. Once I progressed beyond Minute Rice and microwave popcorn I did my best to learn how to make my grandmother's version of Dad's favorite meal. The pie portion was always a disaster but in time I was able to put together a decent pork tenderloin, despite having not eaten pork in ten years, and some very nice tasting Spanish rice.

Yesterday morning the girls and I wandered the aisles at the grocery store, trying to come up with something interesting to make for dinner as Jack, who usually opts for dinner out, choose spending Father's Day at home. He's a meat eater married to a quasi vegetarian so on this day, and his birthday, I will consider the idea of perhaps, but not always, preparing meat. It was the mangoes that inspired me, "what if we make a pork tenderloin on the grill, we can have fish also, and then make tacos?". We bought avocados, cilantro and tortillas, plus jicama and cucumber for a salad.

As Kate and I put together a marinade for the pork I decided to add rice to our meal, using a salsa verde to make a green Spanish rice. It was then that I noticed, without intention I was creating my own version of my Dad's favorite meal, and my Mexico loving father would have welcomed my stuffing his beloved pork tenderloin into a corn tortilla to be topped with tomatoes, cilantro and crema.

The one who cheered for me most and yelled at me often (most notably on that decision to not eat meat) still impacts the choices I make every day. Salud Dad, it was a most delicious dinner, but we skipped the pie. Best to end on a high note and ice cream cones are just down the block.

Really, Some of Our Best Friends are Hispanic

Several months ago Kate wrote a letter to the Alderman, pointing out the lack of coffee shops and bakeries, and the abundance of banks, in her neighborhood. We never heard back, he did not email or mail any response, which I found to be a bit odd, especially for a newly elected Alderman whose correspondent was a 7 year old future voter. We stopped in his office last week, on the way home from school; the Alderman did not remember getting her letter but apologized and spent some time listening to my daughter voice her concerns about the neighborhood.


Kate labored on for quite some time about the abundance of banks within walking distance of her apartment but a sad lack of restaurants and coffee shops. He assured her that she was not alone and that they were working hard to bring more dining options, and fewer banks, to the neighborhood; in fact they had just turned down a proposal for a new bank on a corner only two blocks away from home. This was all good news, and good news has the effect of making Kate just a bit more talkative. The Alderman asked her about school: where she went, what grade was she in, what did she like to study? He should have cleared his calendar for the afternoon.

How did we choose our school? What did we like about it? Rather than cede the floor to her mother, to offer the chance to blather on to an elected official about the painstaking process of getting two children into a Chicago Public School, Kate took this one. It went something like this, although I was so horrified that I might have blocked some of the more painful statements from memory.

"The first school we tried was not a good fit. Everyone was Hispanic! At first we liked that, because we are learning Spanish, but then, oh no, it was crazy! We went to the first meeting at school and looked around the room and saw NO white people, not one. Not one other person in the room who looked like us. And then it just got crazy, everyone yelling at each other. There were children running wild and the principal was just screaming over everyone. I saw several older boys throwing chairs with absolutely no consequences at all, none! Mom and Dad just decided that was not the school for us, even if they spoke Spanish. We could not go to a school where we were the only white people!"

I smiled over her head and said something profound like, "it's interesting, isn't it, the interpretation of our perceptions?". Kate continued on, speaking for what seemed like hours on her family's general distaste for minorities, ethnic and cultural differences, and Mexican food. I cowered, and tried unsuccessfully to interrupt and get her out of there.

The Alderman was quite nice, and humored me, listening to my nervous chatter trying so hard to explain our want of diversity in a  school, not accomplished with one ethnicity alone. Unable to stop myself, I felt it important to point out, repeatedly, that our favorite restaurant in the neighborhood, hands down, is the small taqueria near our apartment, "Oh we are just like family there, really!".

He promised to try it soon, perhaps we might run into each other? But not for breakfast, they don't serve desayuno, most unfortunately for Kate.