Putting the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional families

Open letter to my daughter and grandkids – Part one

I took this photo of my father at Lady Evelyn Lake during one of our Canadian fishing trips. While waiting for a boat to ferry us to our island lodge, dad did his crossword puzzle.

You asked me to talk about your great-grandpa. OK.

His nieces and nephews called him Uncle Nasty. That was his idea. He was everything but.

Dad had a great sense of humor. It ran in the family. Humor served as a foil for the difficult lives they had. Dad and his siblings essentially raised themselves.

Their father was an alcoholic, a drunk actually. To my knowledge, he never made an effort to sober up. My only memories of my grandpa were of him in beer joints — sometimes with his barfly girlfriend. Dad and his siblings used to say, “Some men have dogs; dad has his barfly.”

Their mother, my paternal grandma, struggled with mental illness all her life. She was brilliant, witty, and apparently well-read. Out of nowhere, she would spout facts and observations about any number of topics, including world religions and cultures.

Your great-grandpa was also self-educated. Dad earned his G.E.D. while in the military. He served in the Army during a rare peacetime for the U.S. — between World War II and the Korean War. The first Korean War. Stay tuned, there might be a second one coming up.

He read both Cleveland newspapers every day, the Plain Dealer and the Press. Like his mother, he did the crosswords religiously. Something he continued to do till his death on Pearl Harbor Day 2015. It always fascinated me how they could just sit there and fill in the crosswords in no time at all. Their mastery of obscure words astounded me.

And inspired me.

Not that I cared for crosswords. But it did whet my appetite for words.

That’s what dads should do. Inspire.

That’s enough for now, kids. I’ll tell you more soon. Behave yourselves. And, if you can’t, just carry on driving your folks bonkers. We wouldn’t want them to get complacent now, would we?