Throughout high school and young adulthood, most of my friends remember my dad as a smoker and homemade wine drinker. He always had a cigarette in his mouth and a glass of wine in his hand. He smoked in the house, the car, and anywhere else he wanted, just like most people at that time. I found it strange that most Croatian men smoked, drank, and were the drivers, but most Croatian women didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, and didn’t drive.
He never had a problem with his health, though, and I only saw him drunk twice. He’d cough more than other people, but that was about it. One time I helped him make his annual wine. We were in the garage, crushing grapes into those large barrels.
Whenever you make wine, there are always wasps around. They love that sweet smell. And all of a sudden, my dad yells out and smacks his hand hard against the barrel. “What happened?” I ask. “Damn wasp stung me in the hand, right here.” He points to his palm and shows me the spot. “That’s going to swell up pretty bad,” I told him.
But he said that it wouldn’t. “What are you talking about?” I asked. He pointed to his temple like you do when you’re signifying intelligence. (You tapped your temple just now, didn’t you?) It didn’t make sense to me, and I didn’t think much of it. Soon after, mom called us in to eat dinner. While eating, dad points at his held-outpalm. I completely forgot about the wasp episode because I was focusing on eating mom’s food. I looked at him blankly.
“The wasp,” he smiled. Oh yeah. I looked again. There was no sign of swelling, or redness, or anything.
I thought, son of a gun, he’s showing me the power of the mind. He’s never really mentioned that to me before. I didn’t realize he worked that way. Now, if you know my dad, he’s always been pretty hard-headed, opinionated, stubborn, and says what’s on his mind. I always thought of him as a smart guy for someone that never made it past grade 4 and who came from a family of peasants. But this was new to me.
Fast forward about ten years, and my siblings and I are bugging dad about the perils of smoking. He’s getting older and starting to cough a bit more, so we think it would be a good time for him to consider quitting. Most of his friends have long since stopped because the doctors warned them of impending health issues.
At one point, it got down to the last two smokers, my dad and one cousin, and that cousin eventually got brain cancer. To show us he’s fine, dad went to the doctor and got a chest x-ray. The doctor said it came back clear. He had the lungs of a much younger man.
But that didn’t stop us. We kept bugging dad. One day at another family gathering where we told him he should quit, he said we have to stop bugging him about smoking. We asked why. He said that if we keep doing it, he’ll eventually believe us and have health problems. That stopped me in my tracks. There goes that mind over matter thing again. As long as he believes smoking doesn’t affect him, it won’t. I sure as hell didn’t want to be the reason he got sick. Needless to say, we stopped bringing it up.
It was a few years later when we were visiting again that mom told us that dad quit smoking. We were shocked. We’d given up trying to get him to quit. He was now in his early 70’s, and he’d been smoking since he was ten (that’s another story).
He said that he walked into the garage one day to have a cigarette. He smoked it down to the filter as he always did. Then he looked at it and said, “You damn cigarette. You’re killing me.” He put it out, and that was it. He hadn’t had a cigarette since. It’s been years since that time. According to him, he never had a craving to smoke since that last cigarette.
My dad is still going strong. Now, my mom bugs him about the amount of wine he drinks every day. He’s been drinking wine longer than he ever smoked. His doctor usually urges him to reduce the amount he drinks. But on his last checkup, the doctor said. “You’re 87. You’re healthy as a horse. Who am I to tell you to drink less? Whatever you’re doing. Just keep doing it.”
He has half a glass of water every morning with his shot of moonshine and a couple of cups of coffee throughout the day. But other than that, he drinks his homemade wine. He still loves it. As he puts it, he’ll start drinking milk when cows start eating grapes.
I wish I had his conviction of how strong my mind is. I’m still working on the Jedi mind trick for wasps.