What's left behind

This is what was left of a pork chop after Sunday dinner. 

They were barbecued, really tasty. I cooked 'em, and I was proud of the fare. Look at the meat on that bone.

When I spotted it on that dirty plate, I couldn't help feel equal doses of joy and sorrow--joy because, well, look at all that meat, almost enough for lunch, even a smile of bbq sauce. 

For a moment I was back sixty years ago in Oostburg, Wisconsin, 714 Superior Avenue, sitting at supper. We weren't rich enough to have pork chops all that often, and we weren't on a farm; but the moment I spotted the meat on this bone, I watched my dad chow down every last morsel, then suck the thing clean, telling me all the while--as he had a dozen times before--that what you get off the bone is the very best of the fare.

He didn't just tell me either--he showed me. We weren't uppity, but neither did we slobber. No matter. When it came to bones--chicken bones, too--my dad literally sucked them clean, a job you can't get done without some nasty lip-smackin'.

What hit me when I saw this one was joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. That bone was stone cold. There it was amid the waste. I didn't grab it and clean it because my dad told me I had to--I did it because what was still there was plain wonderful. That's the pleasure.

But the old man in me felt the pain of failure in that meaty thing too. My grandkids hadn't learned to clean up their food. Leaving all that meat behind would have been unthinkable when I was a boy, not just because my dad loved the meat, but because my mother would trot out those starving Korean children to remind us how much we had. Even though I grew up in the fifties and not the thirties, tossing that much good food would have been a sin. 

Dang kids got it too good, I told myself. Wouldn't hurt a bit for them  to know a little want. You can't just leave that much meat on a bone because you don't toss good food. That's the sorrow I couldn't help feel. That's the pain, an old man's pain. "Well, when I was a kid it sure warn't that way at all. . ." You know--that kind of thing. Kids today.

So for the cause of righteousness, I cleaned that meat up good. Look for yourself.

And loved it, not just because it was right thing to do, but also because it was darn good. Dang kids. 

Last Sunday was Mother's Day, but for the time it took me to clean up the bounty left on the bone of that pork chop, I couldn't help but think of my dad doing the same darn thing. I wouldn't doubt he was cleaning up what I left behind. So much for my Sabbath self-righteousness.

I think it was nice of them both to show up for Mother's Day. They both would have loved being there at the table, and Dad would have loved the chops.