Three Layer Cake

The Oatmeal Obsession   (Recipe available in (F)ood Section)

 
The one consistent adjective that people have always used to describe me is “crazy”.  I always thought it was an endearing term, meant in the nicest way.  As I got older I started to realize that it wasn’t so sweet.  Maybe not meant in a bad way, but I really did exhibit some behavior that was not…normal.  Still, not in a bad way, but in a non-fearing way--  on my college application for the essay which asked, "Is there anything else you would like to tell us about yourself?" I wrote, "I will gladly repay you Tuesday for admission to your university today."  I got in.  And that kind of sums up what kind of "crazy" people mean when they talk about me, but when they say my father is "crazy", let's just say that this apple is lucky it fell a little bit farther from the tree.

One summer after graduate school I went home to visit my father and discovered that he had fallen in love with a timer I had given him as a small gift.  The morning after I arrived, he got up at 4,30 as he has ever since I’ve known him (or “0Early:30” as he calls it), and went to the track to speed walk.  By the time he got back, I was awake too.  I saw him go into the kitchen and start to prepare breakfast.  I heard this beeping noise and couldn’t figure out what it was, but didn’t go see.  I heard him go to the bathroom, and heard him come out as the timer was going off.  I heard the beeping noise again, and back he went into the bathroom.  He came out as the alarm went off again.  Beep beep beep beep, back into the bathroom.  Alarm, and out.  I heard vigorous stirring, and went to the kitchen to see just what in the merde was going on.  He had fixed a pot of Quaker Old Fashioned oatmeal (the five-minute kind) and put some in a bowl for me and was walking off toward the living room with a plastic mixing spoon and the oatmeal pot in his hand.  He sat on the sofa and started to eat his oatmeal with the mixing spoon.

I stood looking at him for a minute and asked him if he thought the spoon was too big to eat from.  He said, “No!  This is the biggest spoon I can fit in my mouth!  I wish I could fit a bigger spoon so I could eat faster!”  Of all the things that could be weird about my father, I thought, this was the least worrisome, as long as he doesn’t end up like Mamma Cass some day…  However, it was the answer to my next question that disturbed me.

“What was all of that beeping noise and alarms going off?”  I wish he had ignored my question.  “I have it all timed.  I put the water, oats, and butter in the pot and by the time the timer goes off, the water is boiling.  2 minutes.  I have to make sure I get back in there before I burn it up.  Then I let it cook five minutes, I may cook it too long, but that’s how I like it.  Then I like to let it sit so it gets stiff.”  It wasn’t as much the timed routine that struck me as zany as it was the fact that I could tell that he didn’t even need his alarm to measure the time.  It had become an obsession.  And had it ended there, I could have still written it all off as just a quirk.

But a few months later I talked to him and he told me how much he LOVES oatmeal (which, incidentally, he says is MY fault because I got him hooked on it).  He said that sometimes he can’t sleep at night because he’s so happy thinking about eating his oatmeal in the morning.  In fact, one day he woke up and realized he only had enough oatmeal for half a serving and it ruined his day.  Now he never lets his store of oatmeal get below one canister.  “Why don’t you just go to the store when you get down to half a canister?”  “Because I might forget.”  If you open the cabinets in his kitchen, that’s all that’s in them.  Oatmeal.  Quaker oats.  And although occasionally we compare the prices of oatmeal in Rome and in Nashville, I shouldn’t encourage him.  (He brought his rolled oats in zip-loc freezer bags the first time he visited me in Rome, just in case I couldn’t find any for him before he came.)

Three years ago, he told me that he had some really great news:  He had discovered government oatmeal.  I asked him, “WHAT in the hell is government oatmeal?”  He said, ”You know, they give it to people on food stamps.”  (They didn't have it when we were on food stamps!) And I said, ” How did YOU get government oatmeal?  Are you on food stamps again?”  He said, ”Naw, Smitty sold me a bag.  He doesn’t like them, so he sells his bags to me for a $1.  And I like them better than them ol’ Quaker oats.”  I said, ”They probably come from the same ol’ Quaker oats field.”  He said, ”I don’t know, but I have to figure out how to get a regular supply.”  
 

Oatmeal was keeping my father going.  Since he had crashed his Cessna my first year at college, he hadn’t spoken with great enthusiasm about anything to me, except giant pancakes he had eaten in New Orleans once, and now oatmeal.  His obsession with oatmeal has lasted for years now.  He has tweaked his routine with the highest precision because one day he forgot to turn the stove top off after he made his oatmeal and burned down half of his kitchenette.  (It's ok to laugh, I did.)

 
At regular intervals over time I have stepped back and examined his relationship with oatmeal and have realized how my whole cookbook fascination must have some roots in what drives his oatmeal obsession.  Now on weekends,  I get up at 0Early:30  to go walk, and then I eat a bowl of oatmeal, too.  Someone please tell me it's just a learned behavior.