Coke, parking, and the long game of parenting - opinion

Of my kids, I’m very proud.

I’m proud of their life choices, proud of what they are doing, proud of what they’ve become. Even if I weren’t, I wouldn’t write about it. But I am. Deeply so.

There is, however, one small area where they – or at least a couple of them – have disappointed me. No, it’s not about how often they call or visit, their career paths, or their religious observance. It’s about their beverage choices. They have stopped drinking Coke.

Well, not all of them. Skippy can still down a liter and a half at a sitting, and The Lad still allows himself a taste from time to time. But The Lass and The Youngest have gone cold turkey, joining what seems to be a growing trend: Fewer and fewer people are chugging soft drinks at meals.

It used to be that when we were invited out for Shabbat, alongside soup, salads, and the main course, there was always a bottle of pop. No more. Now you’re lucky if there is juice. Usually, it’s just water. On a good day, maybe some soda water.

I get it. Really, I do. But from my kids? From them, I expected more.

The downside of the 'taste of life'

I had to have Coke; I grew up on it. My father – who lived to 90 – had a can of soda at nearly every meal. That’s what I knew, what I experienced, and what I liked.

But from the earliest days of our marriage, The Wife recognized the downside of the “Taste of life.” So either I had to sneak it – often disappearing into another room at mealtime to imbibe – or the kids had to learn that there were certain things that their parents could do that they could not. Driving was one of them. Voting another. Drinking Coke a third.

For years, The Wife’s strategy backfired. Like so many other things, turning Coke into a forbidden fruit made it all the more tempting. So when the kids left home, they all drank the black elixir quite liberally.

Until they didn’t.

Too much of a good thing can kill you

I limited myself to Coke on Shabbat. Water and seltzer during the week, but when the Shabbat bride arrived, she came bearing cola. For me, a bottle of Coke was what gefilte fish was to my ancestors: Shabbat food, something that made the day special.

And we always made drinking that Shabbat Coke extra special – served perfectly chilled, with plenty of ice. My kids might sit in my seat and interrupt when I spoke, but one thing they would never, ever do was take that first Friday night sip of Coke before I had mine. Drinking Coke on Shabbat around our table wasn’t just about quenching thirst; it was a ceremony.

The Youngest – more on him in a moment – was such a Coke aficionado that if we didn’t finish a 1.5-liter bottle at one meal (which was rare), he’d refuse to drink from it the next day, insisting that once it lost some of its fizz, it had “gone bad,” like milk turning sour.

I complained that he was too pampered, until I brought out the coveted bottle one Shabbat, and he informed me that it was no longer healthy and asked for Schweppes.

My daughter also chimed in, saying she, too, was done with Coke; and even The Lad said that he wanted to cut back. Only Skippy, perhaps sensing an opportunity to get a bigger share of the inheritance, said, “Good. More for me.”

I WAS floored.

Where did I go wrong? I wondered. What would my dad think?

Then it hit me. If the kids have turned on Coca-Cola, it means that as they get older, The Wife’s influence is winning out. The thought that she might have more long-term influence on the children than I do was sobering.

Wow, could it be she was right all along?

And if she was right about Coke – at least in their eyes – what else might she have been right about? Will they swear off meat as she did before we even met? Start doing yoga? Nod kindly at passing strangers in the street?

But just when I thought my influence was fading, that my imprint on their habits and personalities was being erased, The Youngest – the very one who swore off Coke – restored my faith.

“Abba,” he said in a recent phone call, “I’ve turned into you. We went out for breakfast this morning, and now the only place I want to go to is a place where I know there’s parking. I don’t want to get aggravated driving all over looking for a place to park.”

Why did this make him think of me? Because as a child, then a teenager, and even as a young man with a family of his own, the main thing he remembers about our outings was my constant concern – he calls it kvetching – about parking: where we could park, whether there would be parking, why there was not more parking, and why would we even want to go to a place without sufficient parking.

He used to say things like, “Oof, it’s no big deal” or “Abba, chill,” to downplay my concerns. Not anymore. Now, at least when it comes to parking, he can fully identify with the chorus from the classic 1973 Faces song “Ooh La La”:

“I wish that I knew what I know now / when I was younger.”

Had he known then what he knows now about parking, he wouldn’t have rolled his eyes at my constant parking consternation or advised me to “just go with it.”

The only question left is: When will he have a similar epiphany about Coke? 