I grew up (in the 1990s/2000s) in a small town called Carnation, which is about an hour outside of Seattle, Washington. There were no sushi restaurants in the area, and my mom wasn't really into the idea of raw fish anyway, so the first time I had sushi was with my dad, on "Take Your Child to Work" day.
DRIVING WITH MY DAD
My dad worked a few jobs during my childhood, but for most of my life he was a salesman. More specifically, he sold energy-efficient lighting solutions to businesses. It sounded incredibly boring to me as a kid, but it's actually kind of a neat job, reflecting back on it as an adult.
He'd tour a potential client's facilities to determine the current state of illumination in various spaces - a hospital needs different lighting in their operating rooms, offices, waiting rooms, and parking lots. A dining area needs low ambient lighting in a warm spectrum that makes food look nice and sets a mood, but the kitchen needs brighter light so that chefs can see what they're doing. He'd interview employees to ask about what they thought of their current lighting situation, and what improvements they'd like to see. He'd gather and mark up blueprints for the clients' buildings, determining what wiring options were available for a space - what lights were currently there, and what could be installed in the same places to replace those lights. He'd also consider security features like exit signs, and exterior lighting around doorways that might be subject to a break-in. He'd crunch the numbers of electrical costs - how frequently lights needed replacing, how much energy various models would use, and how expensive utility costs were within a given area. Finally he'd determine the cost to his own company to do the work he'd plotted out, and then would pitch a sale to the client for comparison against other similar services, to see if his company won their business.
My dad didn't install the lights himself most of the time, but he did often end up transporting light fixtures around. He'd stuff them into his little Geo Metro, fitting enough electrical equipment into that little car, often poking out through rolled-down windows, that it looked something like a budget-version of Back to the Future's DeLorean.
Such was the day he took me, his son, to work with him. I was about 12, sitting beside him in the front seat of the car, my feet kicked up onto a box of 30 Watt Metal Halide bulbs, for the drive out of Carnation, through progressively larger towns and cities, on our way to Seattle. While we drove, my dad would talk about fishing, about camping trips, about the news, or about chores that needed doing around the house.
He'd tell stories full of puns - nobody called them "dad jokes" back then - and would delight in my groans or (better) laughter. My father and uncles were a master class in wordplay for me growing up, and shaped my sense of humor into the warped and twisted thing that it is today.
All too often on drives with my dad, I'd make semi-interested noises in the manner of a not-quite-teenager, my mind drifting to thoughts of Diablo, Age of Empires, or Starcraft. I'm sure I wasn't great company, but he took it in stride. Gradually the view outside grew more urban, the pastures of Carnation and Fall City giving way to the forests around Redmond and Bellevue, as we finally worked our way toward Ballard in Seattle.
My dad was never really a fan of navigational systems; he hated computers and prided himself on a thorough knowledge of the Seattle area. Given an address, there was a good chance that he could jump behind the wheel and (perhaps with a bit of trial and error) find a place on his own. Some of that was a learned skill. He taught me that even-numbered highways run East to West, while odd-numbered ones run North to South. That 2-digit interstates (I90 for example) go directly through cities, while 3-digit ones (I405 for example) tend to go around them. He taught me that Jesus Christ Built Seattle Under Protest, that even numbered houses were generally on the north and west side of the street, while odd numbered houses were on the south or east. If all else failed, he'd break out a paper map or ask for directions.
Some of his navigational skills were simply from experience - he drove a lot, back and forth between client offices and his own, in a career that spanned over 20 years. He had a habit of calling ahead in the evenings to tell us that he'd be home at a very specific time; he'd say something like "I'll be home at 6:43" in a time before Google Maps existed, before Street View would tell us what an address looked like, or how long it would take to reach. Usually he was right with those bogus ETAs. He used to joke that he always knew which direction was West, because he could "hear the crabs calling out" to him.
I don't remember much about what we actually did on "Take Your Child to Work" day. I expect we visited his office at Veca electric. I probably sat reading a book in the car at some point, while he chatted up a client in their office. Those memories are ephemeral now, their subjects boring to me at the time, but I do remember going out to lunch.
ANOTHER WORLD
Going out to sushi with my dad felt like being allowed into a new and private world. This was something that I gathered he did all the time - eating lunch out someplace in the middle of his work day - but without the context of his family around him. Not beholden to the wants of his wife or children, his lunch was chance for him to pick a restaurant that appealed to him, rather than one that appealed to his family.
The smells were different; I had never eaten kelp in any form, or raw fish. I had never ordered from a restaurant with menus in another language. In retrospect, sushi is an excellent option for getting kids to eat something new, since everything is interesting, delicious, and easily shared.
Going out to a restaurant with my dad always meant listening to him second-guess the lighting in a given space. He'd talk about how the fixtures had too much white light, weren't warm enough, or used too much power. I'd sit embarrassed as he stood and examined a bulb or fixture, blathering on about wattage and lumens, leaking all sorts of peripheral lighting knowledge that eventually oozed into my own brain through osmosis. I miss that sometimes.
I was a picky little shit as a kid, but I loved seafood; I'd try something, sure, but everything was raw and weird and new and definitely to be distrusted. Raw fish was slimy; I remember comparing a piece of salmon nigiri to "a slug on a blob of rice." One of the rolls was just full of fish eggs, which I recognized (with horror) from a salmon-hatchery exhibit at my school. It blew my mind to learn that people actually ate some of the things in there - most of it wrapped in seaweed of all things! The whole trip was all wild and new to me, but whenever I'd turn my nose up at something, my dad would laugh, say something condescending about how "eventually my palette would mature," and would pop a bite of the offending dish into his mouth.
To my frustration as an adult, he was sort of right. Things that I found repellent back then, the chewiness of a chunk of raw fish, or the textural mix of roe in a roll, make my mouth water today to think about them. Back then, that first time, the only dishes that really appealed to me were the plain cooked shrimp nigiri, or gyoza appetizers. I got better.
My dad taught me how to use chopsticks at that sushi place, though admittedly it wasn't with any proficiency the first time. He taught me to "try a bite" of new things; he enforced a "take what you want, but eat what you take" mentality to family dinners, which I'm sure he learned growing up himself in a household with 7 children. My parents both encouraged me to "eat something alive" every meal, referring to fruit and vegetables. I rolled my eyes a lot, hearing those words back then, and miss them today; I try to honor them in my occasionally pescatarian adult life.
I don't mean to say that my mom had no input towards encouraging me to eat like a healthy adult - she absolutely did. I think there was also a certain element to my home life, where my mom spent a whole day surrounded by her kids, cooking them meals and trying to keep our home under control, such that my dad had more energy at the end of the day to force us to eat the vegetables mom had prepared. It takes work to engage with a stubborn kid, and my dad always seemed to arrive home fresh and ready for that work.
LOOKING BACK
I think about that sushi restaurant trip often, but never really talked to my dad about it. I'm deeply touched that he took the opportunity to show me something genuine about his day, rather than grabbing a burger or something of my choice. It's something that I wish I'd spoken to my dad about, that I'd gotten a chance to thank him for in his life.
My dad used to expound on the benefits of yard work, and specifically the "instant gratification" inherent in a garden freshly cleansed of weeds. Parenting is nothing like that - parents don't get to see what sort of people their kids will turn out to be for years, if ever; they have to keep faith that they're setting up a foundation to allow their kids to flourish after they're gone. In life, we often don't get to see the results of our labor.
More than a decade after that first sushi restaurant trip, I went out to a sushi place for the first date with the wonderful young woman who would become my wife.