"Two fingers," he'd say, holding two gnarled, deeply tanned digits up to his glass.
Reaching into the sideboard cabinet, he pulled out a half empty bottle. He poured two fingers worth of brown liquor into the rocks glass and I followed, holding the carton with two hands and topping the booze with at least two more fingers of eggnog. Some years it was Wild Turkey and others Crown Royal, but always whiskey with eggnog.
Like a lot of Japanese-American men of his generation, my grandpa wasn't a super talkative man, but he'd sit at the kitchen table and shoot the s**t over a glass of spiked eggnog, getting chattier as he got deeper into his cups. Even now, there's nothing like a whiff of whiskey and eggnog and nutmeg to put me right back at that table with him during the holidays.
a couple of months ago, I expected organized chaos a la Giada de Laurentiis’ signing. I rolled in about 30 minutes before it was slated to start and Tom was already there. No need to pre-purchase a book, get in line outside and have a handler scribble your name on a post-it for the inscription. I walked right up, got a book (one for me, and one for my mom), had a chance to have a little chat with Tom and then was on my merry way for the rest of my Costco shop.