I cleaned out my pantry recently and found a cake mix tucked in the back corner. Blurry expiration date: 5/19/ 2020. My dad’s.

After he died in 2019, I saved this one to make a cake in his honor. Like so many relics, this got pushed aside.

My parents adhered to the same gender roles assigned to them when they married in 1948. In the Venn diagram of their lives, Mom was kitchen and Dad was garage. They overlapped in the dining room. Mom served, and Dad ate whatever she put in front of him.

When Alzheimer’s hijacked Mom’s brain, Dad stepped up to do chores that were once hers.

At 80-something, he started cooking. Some dishes bombed. Raw fries a little too raw to eat. Pork chops fried to leather. One time he put eggs in a pan to boil, then dozed in his recliner. Dad woke up to popping sounds. We picked egg whites and shells off his kitchen ceiling for days. Dad had a mess and a pretty good story.

Like everything he ever attempted in his life, he got better at it. Guests raved about his version of our Aunt Bernice’s German potato salad. And his homemade chili—heavy on cheap ground beef and kidney beans—he somehow managed to stir even when the sauce came right to the top of the kettle. He served barbeque ribs and fried fish. We cleaned our plates.

Then he took to baking. One of his favorites was rhubarb cake made with stalks from his garden, a stick of butter and a yellow cake mix. His first few tries, his concoction resembled gooey gobs anyone would have thrown in the compost pile except for Joe See. He just added more ice cream.

”

Grief is like glitter, a popular meme tells us: “In the beginning it’s everywhere…

on your hands, in your hair, scattered across every corner of your life. Then one day… you open a forgotten drawer and there it is again.”

PATTI SEE

One day he proudly points to a tiny pie next to a 9-inch one cooling on the counter. “My ma always made a kid-sized one for me when I was a boy,” he says. He wipes his eyes. Some days he’s teary about everything. At age 92, he earned it.

I can only imagine what the 1930’s must have been like for a farm wife—no money meant simple ways to make her children feel special. Maybe an extra pot of steaming water added to the Saturday night bath in the metal tub parked in front of their wood stove or your very own treat.

Now he says, “I made this little one for you.” No matter that I’m 50 years old. I’m still the baby in this family.

Dad was always a skinny guy who worked off his calories on the job. When he retired, he got little exercise. During my mom’s decline, he became a stress eater. The last 35 years of his life he went from a welterweight to heavyweight.

Then he saw a talk show with Dr. Oz promoting apple cider vinegar as a way to take off pounds. Dad called him Dr. Ooze, so I couldn’t hear about this diet plan without cracking up.

After two days downing a shot of vinegar each morning, he laments to me that he’s not lost a pound.

“What did you eat yesterday?” I ask. He lists his meals. “And… Let’s see… I guess I finished the last half of my pie.”  He was not talking about a kid-sized one.

“Dad,” I scold, “no one loses weight if they eat that much pie.”

“Hmph,” he says, “so Dr. Ooze lied.”

Grief is like glitter, a popular meme tells us: “In the beginning it’s everywhere… on your hands, in your hair, scattered across every corner of your life. Then one day… you open a forgotten drawer and there it is again.”

For me, recently, that meant discovering Dad’s old cake mix.

I snap a photo of it—Aldi’s “Baker’s Corner” brand in butter golden—and text it to my son 6,179 miles away. “Keep the box,” Alex texts back.

I don’t need to hold onto any of it. I walk into my woods and shake the cake on some ferns. This feels ritualistic, as if sugar and flour and a bazillion preservatives in this dry mix represent my dad’s body. A dusting of the yellow sweetness blows back onto my bare legs. All I can do is laugh. And be happy I’m not spreading my father’s actual ashes.