A Father's Day Uncorked - The Denver Post

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_15327505

A Father's Day uncorked

By Catherine Getches The Denver Post

It really didn't have much to do with the wine, sometimes the cork is the amazing thing. People are always trying to do cool things with corks - A mere cork board, you say? How about my cork wreath? Think your cork floors are cool? Well check out my cork iPhone cover. Most people save theirs thinking...one day, one day, I'm really going to do something really cool with these. Which winds up meaning: look at my basket full of corks.

Drinking wine brings back less memories of spending time with my dad than, say, drinking skim milk during dinner growing up. And not just because skim milk doesn't have the potential to make your memories muddled.

After leaving for college and visiting "home" back in Boulder, family dinners together finally graduated from being annoyed with questions like "how was your day" to enjoying great conversations, laughing together, realizing the world doesn't revolve around you (what?), and that your parents are actually cool (What? What?). Also, more and more frequently, dinners were spent out celebrating something: When you move away and have less time together everything seems more festive, packed in, potent.

Out one night, while staying completely engaged in conversation I noticed my Dad doing his "neat" thing at the table, cleaning and organizing around his plate, making sure the fork was straight, and then came the challenge: balancing the cork from a bottle of Kings Estate Pinot Noir on the end of a fork as if he was putting a little soldier to attention in a precarious position.

My Dad, a man of routine and order (nails clipped on Fridays, pushups each morning after rolling out of bed... wait, are those hospital corners on his perfectly stacked of t-shirts?) is no stiff. He also likes a good game, a small prank - as in, standing still behind some door my mom is about to open for the delight of seeing her scream with her hands in the air and then dissolve into laughter.

At dinner we were all in a debate about something (because when you're in college having lots of opinions suddenly seems cool), and I kept knocking the cork over. Not entirely noticing at first, he kept righting it, I kept knocking it over, back and forth, grinning inside, until the bill came. The cork became a hot potato on the way home, and later, a member of mileage plus.

I think the first place I put the cork was in one of his cowboy boots, the boots I'd hide next to on the floor of his closet, behind his hanging suits. He'd ride his bike home from work (yes in a suit and cowboy boots), and I'd run upstairs to hide.

He'd come in to change into something comfortable before dinner, and I'd wait to scare him, grab his boots at the ankles, and then squeal down the hall laughing uncontrollably. This never got old, and my mom wouldn't let on that I was hiding up there just like the 4 nights before. I thought I managed to scare him a good deal of the time; if not, he did a good job of pretending for my sake.

I found the cork more that once in my suitcase; the first was once I unpacked my bags back in New York City. He found it in his coat pocket when I flew back to Colorado on a visit for Christmas. When my mom and dad visited our six floor Manhattan walk-up I was sure I didn't give him a chance to hide it anywhere ... until I opened a carton of Ben & Jerry's icecream later that night.

He managed to get buzzed back in and climbed the stairs (he could tell you the exact number, I'm sure) and convinced my roommate to let him in. After a visit home for Thanksgiving I laughed to myself picturing him turning on the hot water in the shower and getting burned by the sight of the cork sitting there next to the shampoo.

I moved from New York to Arizona and from Arizona to Sonoma. And the cork came, too. He found the cork in his briefcase, I found it in a sock. It was in my carry-on bag, and on his computer keyboard at his office. Once I planted it "on his person," during a hug goodbye in his parka packet - a feat I felt particularly victorious over. It has been in more places than I can remember over the last 10 years and we have never spoken a word about any of the cork game.

I almost brought it up once, worried that it was lost for a couple months, a family trip to Seattle for a funeral and a few more visits that passed by without seeing it. Sometimes I can't remember who has it.

Didn't I leave it last in his dop kit? Wait, what if he never looked in the bag under his bike seat? But it shows up again. He finds it in a Netflix envelope, I find it next to some tea in the pantry.

I moved to San Francisco and then San Diego; the cork came, too. I came home for my sister's baby shower and left with a cork in my running shoe. He visited San Diego and I retrieved the mail and the cork from the mailbox.

Even if I can't get home as much as I want, even if my Dad is bad at e-mail and I'm worse at talking on the phone, the cork seems to opens up a place where I can laugh with my Dad across all that distance and preserve all the memories. The game might not some close to that crafty cork trivet or wine charm, but it's still pretty cool, as long as I win.