father’s heedless table manners were a perennial embarrassment to my mother and us. But what could we do? As he slurped his soup or coffee, making the zhupping noise my mother had stopped bothering to complain about years ago, we would groan, Daaaaad!!! But he wouldn’t reply. Instead, he would tuck his head deeper into his collar, turtlelike, making you feel slightly girlish for noticing things like table manners. When I was at college in the South, I was particularly embarrassed by my father’s manners, which would be hard to conceal on those
