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Lima Beans

Posted by Mark | Filed under Life

I was over Heather Arm­strong’s site catch­ing on the cur­rent wack­i­ness in her life and her post Of Lima Beans and Pickle Juice cracked me up. More to the point, it reminded me of my own family’s last encounter with the dreaded lima bean.

This was prob­a­bly about six, maybe 7, years ago. I was hav­ing din­ner with my folks. Mom had just fin­ished set­ting the food on the table and was about to take her chair; when Dad dishes him­self up some of the mixed veg­eta­bles. While dish­ing the veg­eta­bles; he makes a com­ment –sound­ing rather excited as he does so– that there are lima beans in the vegetables.

Mom shud­ders in dis­gust and fin­ishes sit­ting down. Dad looks at her some­what puzzled.

---

I’m going to stop this nar­ra­tive momen­tar­ily to point some­thing out about my father that was truly amaz­ing to me. That would be his mem­ory. He never for­got anybody’s name and would fre­quently remem­ber small details from con­ver­sa­tions he had with them years ago. He was an active mem­ber of the local Mas­conic lodge and for their ceremonies/ritual; he would mem­o­rize the entire thing and do it with­out resort­ing to any kind of ref­er­ence. As I under­stand it that’s expected of the local Masons but is still some­thing that not all of them are able to do.

Myself, I have to carry a PDA in order to keep track of my own phone num­bers and my fiance remem­bers the names of my cousins bet­ter than I do.

Back to the story.…

---

Still look­ing puz­zled, Dad asked “what’s wrong?”

With a mix­ture of dis­gust and a hint of con­fu­sion on her face; Mom said “I hate lima beans.”

Dad was just floored by this. “You hate lima beans?!? Huh, I never knew that!”

At that point, Mom gave Dad a look that said he was tread­ing on thin ice and which made me glad that I’d just stayed on the side­lines of this con­ver­sa­tion. Then she said “In all the years that we’ve been mar­ried; have I ever cooked lima beans for you before?”

He sat there for a moment, cast­ing his mind back through all the meals over the years. Finally he looked up at her with a smile and said “No, I don’t believe you have.”

Mom just kept look­ing at him.

Even­tu­ally, Dad had the grace to say “Ah” and we were able to con­tinue on with the meal. The remain­der of the meal was unevent­ful and I couldn’t say what else we were eat­ing that night; but I’ll never for­get that moment.

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