MY FATHER'S MANDOLINE

“Daddy stepped in to supplement their daily menu with coleslaw, which he loved.…”

My father wasn’t much of a cook, but after my mother became sick with Parkinson’s disease and had trouble running the kitchen as she had for more than 50 years, Daddy stepped in to supplement their daily menu with coleslaw, which he loved and which, along with salad and eggs, was one of his specialties. When my kids were young and came to visit, making coleslaw with Hal, as he was known to his grandchildren, was a much-anticipated highlight.

In whatever he did, Daddy liked to pose as the expert, and this Börner mandoline was his secret for slicing the perfectly thin ribbons of green cabbage he claimed made his coleslaw the best. With its sharp V-shaped blades, the mandoline was a serious tool, and my children weren’t allowed near it. They perched on a stepstool at a safe viewing distance while Hal worked his magic and explained his special technique. 

Memories of my own childhood: Whenever I picked up a knife to slice an apple, Daddy’s caution—“Watch it, watch it, you’re going to cut yourself”—rang in my ears. But that makes him sound fussy, or like a killjoy, which he was not. As his gravestone says, he was Ever Exuberant in Life. Always glass half-full. 

He’d grown up in the Bronx (where he and his friends picked up cigarette butts from the gutter to smoke behind their apartment building, which is what he was referring to whenever he said he quit smoking at the age of eight), but following World War II (lieutenant, Signal Corps), he and an army buddy drove and camped their way across North America, from the East Coast up to Canada, down into Mexico and back up to California, at which point he sent his parents a crate of oranges and said he’d be staying in California for good.

He became a CPA with his own firm, and rode his bike to his Beverly Hills office just about every day. He rode with my mother, too, through 10 countries and 20 states. He knew how to say “I am happy to meet you” in 32 languages. As his gravestone also notes:

On Three Pillars His Life Stood
Learning  Schmoozing  Family

Once the cabbage was sliced and the mandoline put away, it was time for my kids to assist. My father liked his coleslaw with lemon and rice vinegar. Actually, he liked lemon on everything: At dinner when I was growing up, there was always one on the table in case he wasn’t happy with the taste of his food; it seemed there was nothing a little lemon couldn’t fix. With the coleslaw, he and my children squeezed, poured and tasted until they got it just right, then transferred it to a ceramic bowl to be ceremoniously brought to the table and presented for lunch. 

He died, of dementia, at 96. So far, no amount of lemon has helped.

—Jan Berlfein Burns

My daughter the coleslaw queen learning the ropes from the coleslaw king.

My mom took this picture of my dad in his office building. It’s always been a family favorite because she so captured his essence.

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Jan Berlfein Burns is the author of March of the Living: Our Stories, a self-published collection of wartime stories from Holocaust survivors. She’s published essays in 34th Parallel, Jewish Literary Journal and Jewish Journal and is an amateur photographer and genealogist.

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