Something Good to Reach For
Don Krumpos · Domestic · Family · Father · Memoir · Rituals · Support
One of my special memories is movie night.
Usually it was Sunday, and usually it was the Disney family movie hour. That phrase alone carries a whole atmosphere for me now — the television glowing in the living room, the weekend nearly over, school waiting somewhere beyond sleep, and the family gathered around something simple enough that no one had to explain why it mattered.
My father would make caramel corn from scratch.
Not microwave popcorn. Not a bag from the store.
He made the popcorn in a kettle on the stove, the old way, with oil and heat and shaking. I can still imagine the sound of it: the first few experimental pops, then the sudden storm inside the pan, the lid rattling, the smell filling the kitchen before the movie even started.
Then he made the caramel.
Some kind of hot, gooey, sugary mixture with Karo syrup in it. I did not know the recipe. I only knew it became glossy and dangerous and wonderful, and that he would drizzle it over the popcorn in a great sticky ribbon.
Much of it settled to the bottom.
That was the treasure.
The top popcorn was good, of course, lightly coated and sweet. But the bottom of the bowl was where the real prize gathered — hardening caramel pieces, dense and sharp-edged, stuck together in golden clumps. I would work at them with a metal spoon, scraping and prying, trying to break loose the richest pieces.
It took effort.
That was part of the pleasure.
The spoon against the bowl.
The stubborn candy at the bottom.
The movie playing.
The sugar slowly giving way.
I can taste it even now.
Looking back, what moves me is not only that he made it, but that he made it regularly enough to become ritual. He could have just put a bowl of popcorn out. He could have skipped it. He was tired often enough. There were always other things to do.
But on movie night, he made caramel corn.
That was the shape of the evening.
And like so much with him, the care came through a thing made by hand.
There was another thing he made sure I had.
A basketball hoop.
I started to love basketball in seventh grade, and that love carried through high school. I was not casual about it. I wanted to practice. I wanted to shoot. I wanted repetitions. Layups, free throws, bank shots, jumpers from whatever imaginary three-point line I had mapped onto the driveway.
My father made sure there was a hoop.
That sounds simple, but in Wisconsin it is not quite simple.
A hoop outside is one thing in summer or fall, when the driveway is clear and the ball comes back to your hands without freezing them. Winter is different. Snow, ice, darkness, cold. Basketball becomes something the climate tries to take away.
So he made sure I had an inside hoop in the garage.
That mattered.
It meant I could keep playing when the season turned. It meant the thing I loved did not have to disappear for half the year. The garage became a small gym, imperfect and cold and probably full of obstacles, but enough. A hoop, a ball, a little space, and a boy who needed somewhere to send his energy.
I doubt basketball was his passion.
Sports radio, yes. He liked that. But my actual basketball obsession was mine. He did not need to share it fully in order to support it.
That may be the quiet lesson here.
A parent does not have to love the same thing in the same way.
They only have to notice that the child loves it.
And then, if they can, make room.
He made room.
He put up the hoop.
He kept it available.
He allowed the garage to become a winter court.
I do not remember him making speeches about practice, discipline, or following my dreams. That would not have been his style. He simply made sure the hoop was there.
And in a child’s life, “there” is everything.
The bowl was there.
The hoop was there.
The father was there.
That is the pattern I see now.
Caramel corn for movie night. A basketball hoop for winter. Small provisions, maybe, but not small to the child receiving them. They were ways of saying: your pleasures matter here. Your need to play matters. Your becoming matters.
He may not have said it that way.
He would not have.
But I felt it.
On Sunday nights, working a metal spoon against hardened caramel at the bottom of the bowl.
In the garage in winter, shooting baskets while the cold pressed against the doors.
Two ordinary scenes.
A television glow.
A kettle on the stove.
A hoop in a garage.
A father making sure there was something good to reach for.