My father had smoked a pipe all of his life.
None of the rest of us, my mother, brothers or myself ever touched a cigarette and increasingly voiced our displeasure and disapproval of smoking - as the decades passed - which meant that he had agreed by the 90s to confine himself to the kitchen after dinner (which was when and where he usually did the wash up - I cooked, when I was home) whenever he decided to light up, and not smoke anywhere else in the house.
He would announce - after dinner was well over and everything cleared away - (smokers lighting up while others are still eating is something that has always struck me as the height of bad manners) that he was about to have a smoke (while doing the washing up) and that therefore, we were free to go, but welcome to stay, but that he would be having a smoke should we wish to remain in the kitchen.
Usually, we left, but occasionally, one of us stayed - I remember grading student papers seated at the kitchen table while he smoked, and ironed, and sipped red wine, and chatted, classical music playing softly on the radio.
As he also did the ironing in the kitchen, while sipping a whiskey or glass of red wine, Turkish handmade pipe to hand, the kitchen - after meals - was his domain.
However, he was admitted to hospital for a cardiac operation (stents and a bypass) - the very week of 9/11 - and I remember sitting with him the night before the operation, which was scheduled for the following morning.
He was sitting on his bed, in his room, fully and immaculately dressed in elegant tweeds, proper dress shirt with tie, pressed corduroys, and polished brogues, and after his meal, (pasta, he liked pasta), he smoked his pipe with a slow, sensual, pleasure. Then he sighed, smiled, and announced that that was the last smoke he would ever have, that he would not smoke again (he had been advised not to) once his operation had taken place.
And, to our astonishment, he never did. Rather, he went cold turkey, and stayed well away from nicotine (though he still enjoyed Italian red wine, and Scottish or Irish whiskey) for the remaining four years of his life.