Concoction food was the invention of my father, a recently divorced middle-aged man tossed back into the single lifestyle in a one-story house on the outskirts of Seattle. All he had to worry about was his yellow lab, and for a couple of days a week, feeding his three-year old daughter. If we ran out of spaghetti and meatballs, we ate cereal for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight snacks. On school days my brown paper sack would contain a sandwich made of stale bread and a half-inch thick slab of cheddar cheese slathered in mayonnaise. So I was not the least bit surprised when one morning, after our reserves of Cheerios and pasta had run dry, I found him devouring a bowl of soggy white mush. He listed the ingredients nonchalantly, as if plain yogurt, slightly souring cottage cheese, banana slices, and a squirt of honey were no more unusual than a PBJ.

I hesitantly scooped up a small bite of the runny white chunks and let it ooze down my throat. The clash of flavors and textures made my eyes blink in surprise but I knew that no other little girls shared this special meal with their dads, so I took another bite. For the next three years, my dad presented increasingly exciting concoctions as the events in our lives grew equally as colorful. Dad entered the middle-aged dating scene: he added sliced peaches to our recipe. My mom remarried and informed me she was pregnant: Dad ran out of plain yogurt and substituted Yoplait Mixed Berry. My parents began a six-year court battle: Dad experimented with blueberries and red grapes. Three years after the fateful first bite, my dad married a woman who refused to taste our concoction food. She baked fabulous desserts and presented us with extravagant five-course meals, but my dad stopped cooking spaghetti and making me inedible cheese sandwiches. He also stopped kayaking, bike racing, dog sledding, playing the saxophone, and taking me along on all his adventures. For some reason, he still ate concoction food even though the fridge was full of organic flax-seed omega-3 enhanced non-hydrogenated snacks. While we ate our bowls together, we would reminisce about our hikes to remote glacial lakes in Montana. Even if he wanted to, there was no more time for father-daughter excursions. In the mornings, I’d tiptoe nervously downstairs and see my dad casually reading the newspaper and devouring his bowl of concoction food. I wondered how he could still eat our special food while I was so utterly miserable. To him it was just a habit that he never gave up. He never realized that to me, it was more than just a tradition. It was like a code of honor for some powerful secret society, the symbol of an everlasting father-daughter bond engraved in cottage cheese instead of blood.

Ten years later, I have only recently forgiven this betrayal. Whenever my dad sees me preparing a bowl of white mush, to this day I think he assumes that he has created a delectable recipe. I never mention that I eat it for the same reason I made spaghetti my favorite food and why I would always take one courtesy bite of my cheese sandwich before I threw it away. I eat it now because the sharp taste reminds me that I no longer try to be invisible when I visit my dad. I have emerged from the divorce stronger, wiser, and more independent. I eat concoction food as a reminder that I love and appreciate my family even if we don’t always blend together smoothly.

 This essay was written by Leslie Roberson, Garfield Class of 2007, Yale University Class of 2011.