Pickled Herring with My Dad

When I was three, my dad sat on the edge of my bed many nights after placing a plate of our favorite snack by my ballerina music box, and then delved into Treasure Island or Nancy Drew.

When I was six, I sat cross-legged at his feet, beneath the TV tray laid with our favorite Sunday football snack, Jim Brown dominating the field while the crowds roared, my dad handing me a Ritz cracker smeared with cream cheese and topped by a chunk of pickled herring. “That’s disgusting,” my mom was apt to say while my brother pantomimed a barfing boy.

When I was eight, my dad taught me to ice skate. He cut figure eights holding my hand, lifting me off the ground like a flying princess. When we finished, cheeks ruddy, we simmered hot chocolate with marshmallows to drink with our pickled herring snack. My mother wrinkled her nose. “Chocolate and pickled fish?”

When I was 15, my dad and I sat at the Formica bar in my parents’ kitchen eating our pickled herring while he told me stories of his Army days storming Normandy Beach during the first wave and admiring the beautiful women. The only French he remembered was now a song, “Voulez-Vous Coucher Avec Moi?” It means will you sleep with me, although he swore he never kissed a girl until he met my mother.

When I was 18, my dad and I ate pickled herring at the Formica bar days before my wedding, when he made me promise to finish college and handed me a check for a down payment on my first house.

When I was 26, my dad landed in the hospital, where I sat and held his hand. “They can’t find anything wrong. I’ll be home in the morning.” He grumbled about the food and asked my mom to make roast beef for his homecoming dinner and me to buy a jar of pickled herring. I kissed him and promised, later tucking it beside the cream cheese, which you could now buy whipped.

My dad died that night. Even now, decades later, I search for what has worked its way to the back of the refrigerator, and dig out the pickled herring, eating it out of the jar with a two-pronged silver shrimp fork, each briny, sweet chunk a different memory of my dad, nourishing me always.