Turns Out, They Were Listening

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about cooking.

Not just the food, either. The grills, the smokers, the different cookers we’ve had over the years, and all the good times that came with them.

Some of the food was really good. Some of it was pretty dang bad. That happens.

The food doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be the host to good times, good music and, well, some good food.

Over the years, a whole lot of people have stood around those cookers with me.

I taught my grandson’s dad from scratch how to run a smoker and how to cook. He didn’t know much when we started, and now he has turned into a fine cook on both a grill and a smoker. I can sit back now and watch him do things I remember showing him years ago.

That gets my attention.

There were plenty of other kids around too. Some were ours in every way that mattered, and some were neighborhood kids who spent enough time at our house that they might as well have been. Now they’re grown. Some of them drive down from hours north, and these days they have kids of their own running around.

I never had biological kids of my own, and I’d be lying if I said I never wondered about that part of life.

Not so much about what I missed, but about what I would leave behind.

I used to wonder if any of these dang kids learned anything from me at all.

Then every now and then I’ll sit quietly and listen.

I’ll hear one of them say something that sounds awfully familiar. I’ll watch how they handle something, how they cook, how they treat somebody, or how they deal with their own kids.

And I’ll think, well I’ll be damned.

They were listening.

Don’t get me wrong. They’re their own people through and through. I’m not taking credit for who they became.

But I can see a little of me in all of them.

Years ago, when I was in high school, I had an English teacher who was one of the nicest ladies I ever met. A lot of kids in her class took advantage of that and could be downright rotten to her.

One day I asked her how she put up with it year after year.

She told me, “Ray, if I have helped one child become the best person they can be, then I have done my job as not only an educator, but as a human being.”

I never forgot that.

At the time, I understood the words.

At 53 years old, I think I finally understand what she meant.

Maybe my path was never going to be having kids of my own. Maybe part of what I was supposed to do was help the ones who came through my life however I could.

I didn’t have the fanciest stuff. I didn’t have the most money. Half the time I was probably figuring things out right along with everybody else.

But I did have some pretty great kids around me.

Now those kids have kids.

And somewhere between all the cookouts, burnt food, good food, loud music, smoke, mistakes, and everything else that came with it, some things stuck.

I spent a long time wondering what I would leave behind.

Turns out, they were listening.