The recipe is simple, but exact.
Melt 32 marshmallows over boiling water with 1 cup of whole milk. Not 33 marshmallows, not a bag of them, not a cup of them, but 32 of those puffy, squishy, white cubes of childhood memory goodness which are made of 4 simple ingredients: sugar, water, air, and gelatin. Carefully counted, these confections are melted over a double boiler with the milk, into which you fold 1 pint of whipped cream. The mixture is then poured into a large rectangular baking dish over crushed Famous Chocolate Wafers, topped with more wafers, and chilled in the refrigerator until set.
We called it Delores’ Delight in honor of the neighbor up the street who first served it to us, and was kind enough to pass on the recipe to our mom. It was my favorite desert. Period. End of story. It’s hard to describe just how good it is. Not too sweet, which is a shock as a marshmallow on its own can make one’s teeth hurt. Not too rich, despite all that puffy marshmallow and whipped cream goodness. It is just right.
Whenever my mom made it, we would have our first helping after dinner. It never disappointed, and we couldn’t wait until the next night to have some more.
But then.
Somewhere around midnight I would wake up and tiptoe into the kitchen. I tried to be quiet, but before too long I’d hear footsteps coming from my parent’s bedroom, and my dad would appear. Not to scold me or send me back to bed, but to have a little clandestine father-daughter date in the middle of the night with his youngest, over another helping of Delores’ Delight.
It’s one of my favorite memories of my dad. But unlike Delores’ concoction, the recipe that made my dad my dad was was anything but simple or exact. He was a messy, confusing mixture of too many ingredients, making him hard to figure out, and difficult to predict. For me, and probably for him, too. Sadly, he didn’t ever get around to understanding himself, which made it difficult for me to understand him as well. He was a good dad in a lot of ways, and a not so good one in others. Some things he got right, others he got wrong, and a few he got way wrong, which sounds a lot like being a human to me. It can be easy to camp on the good and ignore the bad, or hold onto the bad and forget the good. But neither of those are a good recipe for an emotionally healthy and full-hearted life.
The truth is, my dad, in all his imperfection, helped me become me. In fact, from this vantage point, the things that were the most painful, the most damaging, are why I am who I am today. Not because I let those have the final word, but because I didn’t.
We had Delores’s Delight for dinner last night, and it made me think of all those sweet midnight dates with my dad. Those memories reminded me of others with him that I will always cherish. I guess life’s recipe is simple but exact. Combine the good with the bad and do everything we can to fold it together into a life in which you can delight, and others can, too.
Note: Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers were discontinued in 2023, after nearly a century of production. Boo. However, Dewey’s Bakery Brownie Crisp Wafers are a darn good substitute.
