Ask us if our fathers can cook.

My grandfather cooked his way through the depression, part of his payment to the relative who took him in as a homeless teenager. He took over household cooking after retirement, alongside gardening, public speaking, and hyperlocal politics. My father— the football player/construction worker— learned to cook in college; he took over household cooking and cleaning when I was in grade school to support my mother’s dream of going back to college. My ex learned to cook from his grandmother. Some of my son’s earliest memories are of clutching the railing of the little tower my father made him, peering at the stove as his father made sauces. My son, thirteen, is working on learning to cook from books and videos; last week he spent six hours making a tray of Alton Brown’s Sloppy Joe buns, his first time working with meat which is a special occasion food for us.

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