At six years old, I sat down after Sunday morning cartoons and wrote my very first story. The illustrations were nothing to speak of, but the premise went something like this:
Bugs Bunny becomes a priest and takes over my parish church, Good Shepherd.
Unexpectedly, he looks very sharp in a vestment. He delivers a sermon that lasts only one minute long, and then Mass is over. From the pulpit, a carrot is loudly, unabashedly chewed. Before we all genuflect and skedaddle, one young lady is called forth from the congregation (myself, of course.) And in an exercise of Divine intervention, Bugs makes an exception for me, little two-more-years-till-communion me, and lets me taste the sacramental wafer. The end.
I gave the story to my father, a British Catholic in the tradition of Evelyn Waugh, and he loved it. At a time when he mainly intimidated me (his accent, his suits and cigars, his bowls of spicy radishes) I found in his appreciation of this story a common thread for the two of us to hang onto.
When I was nine years old, my parents told me it would be fun if I made them breakfast in bed every Sunday. I was such a geek, I didn't know they were pulling a Tom Sawyer on me.
Since Father's Day coincides with the start of summer, grilling is the best way to celebrate male parenting.
One of the few food memories I do have of my dad is his trying to make the perfect fried egg. He had supposedly been a cook at the start of WWII. But military mess food then was powdered eggs, ersatz coffee, canned and mystery C-rations covered in “chocolate.” 
My late grandfather, Daddy Bill, was tall and skinny and uniquely dedicated to his habits and interests. He was a very snappy dresser – I vividly remember a purple wool sport coat that he once wore to Grandparents’ Day at my school, impressing my female teachers enormously – and he loved cars and taking painting classes and going swimming at the beach, even (or especially) when the water was way too cold, even for polar bears. But what he really loved was food. 