This is the very best answer to “What do you want for dinner?”
The champion of satisfaction wants what’s available.
It’s a fine thing to want “what’s available.”
Lisle V. Roberts. I knew this man for fifty-eight years and nine months. I paid fairly close attention for about half that time, the last half. During my first 10 years or so, I do not remember taking much notice — he was just Daddy: farmer, teacher, best ever reader of bedtime stories. He was strict, and I was a little afraid of him, but he was also funny and loving. Even then I was absorbing, without being aware of it, the ways my father made sense of the world and his place in it.
Later I watched closely as Dad moved through his 80s and into his 90s. He took an unusual approach to growing really old. He aged without worry. Until his last day, at age 96, he enjoyed the richness of everyday life: good food, gardening, grandchildren, hummingbirds, trees, church, stories, clouds, jokes, making things. He stayed funny and attentive, making him very good company.
It took a long time for me to notice something missing in Dad. It had been missing my whole life. As my own old age began, I realized I had never heard Dad speak enviously of another person. Not regarding money, recognition, acquisition, experience, or connections. Not even stature: his 5' 6" height earned him the right to “short man syndrome”—as well as the nickname “Shorty” from his high school vocational agriculture students —but he was plenty tall for his own satisfaction.
He and his ancestral land, not rich but beloved, always seemed to be enough. He said as much on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday. He stated his gratitude that he and Mother, their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren all were living at that time. He called himself fortunate.
Sometime in the summer of 1988 we four children and umpteen grandchildren helped Mother and Dad celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Mother was still quite vigorous. Dad, at 76, seemed well enough, though a few months later he had quintuple bypass surgery. My brother Howard said, “No matter what happens, this has been enough. How could they or we ever complain? There has been so much.”
In my heart I did not agree, though I probably nodded at the time. In truth, I could not see how there could ever be enough of the love and protection of those two singular people with their huge hearts. I struggled to imagine my life without them on this earth. As part of my preparation for the inevitable, I told myself I would still keep learning from them even after they had left this life.
Dad entered Kentucky’s Berea College when he was 22, graduating in 1937. Many of his story-lessons began, “When I was at Berea….” He passed along to me his gratitude for what he learned there; I hold Berea College and its graduates in highest esteem.
One of Dad’s Berea stories starts with his older brother Mack, who began his education to be a family doctor by going to a different school, Cumberland College, in Williamsburg, Kentucky. Dad said, “When Mack came home from Cumberland, he said the food was bad. Said they ate an awful lot of peas. When I went to Berea, I decided I would eat whatever they had. And I did.”
Sometimes Dad said more about new foods he ate at Berea. In one of my favorite stories, he arrived back at the college after a field trip to find the dining room had closed. The kindly food service director sent him to the faculty dining room, where fresh green beans in white sauce were on the menu. Memorably delicious, he said.
The main point of his story about eating whatever they served at Berea is not that sometimes the food was delicious, though he said it was. The main point is that he made a decision to be satisfied, and that decision made it possible for him to enjoy his meals, and to have enough, whether he liked the food or not.
He kept the spirit of his Berea pledge throughout his life, and not just about food. Food is an important arena, though, one in which it is possible to be disappointed several times a day. Dad avoided all that. I think of him as the Champion of Satisfaction.
Dad cooked for himself for years, often making homemade rolls and cinnamon rolls, cakes, pies, and cookies for others. He could cook anything that occurred to him, but he made most of his decisions about what to eat based on what he found when he opened a freezer or cabinet door.
During my weekly visits, I liked to cook for him, give him a small vacation from the kitchen. I always asked him what he wanted, not because I expected the kind of specific answer most people would give, something like “I want a grilled cheese sandwich.” Instead I asked him as a family ritual, for the fun of hearing his stock answer, “What’s available? I want what’s available.”
I treasured the absence of fussiness or demand. I treasured his lack of preference as an intentional gift of generosity from him to those who sometimes cooked or did other small things for him.
Lisle did not come with satisfaction built in as a genetic trait. He decided to make what he had be enough. He chose to let all the nattering distractions go and make contentment happen. That is good news for the rest of us, because it means we can choose satisfaction, too.
This man moved on into the next world in 2008, yet I keep learning from his example. Because I saw his choices and their results, I know what is possible. I too can choose to want what is available. I still have plenty to learn from the Champion of Satisfaction, but I am working on it.
