Dad's Dad

August 22, 2019

Third week in a row that I’m here at my Shut Up & Write! Group.  I like it so much that I even threw in an extra Saturday last week to finish the “Fuck you I Need a Hug” short story about my student.

Now though, back to my dad. 

I’ve decided to write about my dad in terms of other people who knew him so as to get a broader, more objective view of him. I’m going to email my cousins and hopefully get on the phone with them (both a bit older than me) and also with my mom to get a more historical account. 

I don’t know much about my dad’s parents.  I never met his mother, unless it was as a baby, and his dad, who I did know a bit, died when I was in 3rd or 4th grade.  Still, saying something about them will give more of a complete picture of who he was and how he was raised. 

The grandmother I never knew was named Adelle.  I have inherited photos of her, but not many.  They are black and white snapshots of her, sitting in folding chairs or huddled among others on a couch at family gatherings.  She seemed plump and happy, but from what my cousins have told me, she was anything but a loving mother.  She was a hoarder, apparently.  The one story I heard, repeatedly, was that she never threw anything away.  My dad and his older brother (my Uncle Dan) would take advantage of times when she was out of the house to throw away all the newspapers that had piled up.  A true fire hazard. The other story regarding her was when the 7Up bottling factory in Chicago was giving out free samples, she made my dad and his brother get in line twice, possibly even making them change clothes to make the deception less suspicious. She was unusual, to put it euphemistically. One day, I was in middle or high school at the time, my dad came home looking a bit weary.  He entered the kitchen where I often did my homework or helped with dinner, and he said, quite simply, “My mother died.”  

“Who?” I said.  I had not clue she was even alive! Clearly, he hadn’t wanted us to know-- hadn’t wanted us to know her or her to know us. He was ashamed of her, perhaps.  Wanted to disassociate himself from her odd ways… establish his own more regulated, stringent practices. 

            I remember thinking it was so strange. No funeral services for us to go to, no walk down memory lane to understand more about this grandmother my father had eschewed all my life. There would be no getting to know her-- only knowing that he wanted to be nothing like her. 

My grandfather, “Grandpa Kungie”, was a limited presence in my younger years. I say limited because our visits were literally that.  In hindsight, it almost seems as though they were supervised.  He came to visit our home once in a while, and other times we visited him in his small apartment. Like Adele, Stanley was overweight.  But unlike the bubbly laughter I saw in her photos, I remember him being quiet.  Friendly but slow to speak, slow to move. We went for walks sometimes. We played cards more often.  “Go Fish” was our game, and he would make up funny verses about the three of us kids as we played.  “Fishy, fishy in the book, Karen catch him on a hook. Patti fry it in a pan, Christopher eat it like a man.”  He brought us those orange marshmallow-y peanut-shaped candies you sometimes still see near the checkout at the grocery store.  It is nostalgic for me, seeing those candies.  I can still smell them, taste them, and feel their soft chewy texture between my teeth.
            I learned later on that my grandfather was an alcoholic.  It made sense.  Our visits were erratically infrequent and didn’t usually last very long.. My dad always seemed on edge when we were together… afraid his father would spoil the stable image of him he’d tried to mold for us.  

            Grandpa Kungie’s death was the first one for me.  At 8 or 9 years old, I didn’t really know what to think.  I actually remember  not knowing what to think, how to react. I was sad. Sad that I wouldn’t have anyone to sing that silly song for us any more, bring us candy peanuts, play cards with us.

Despite their divorce, the hoarding and alcoholism, my paternal grandparents raised two successful men. My uncle, more relaxed in my estimation, was a successful engineer.  My father, more on-edge and most happy when outdoors, seemed more fixated on maintaining the idyllically normal, secure home his own parents were unable to provide for him.