To my dad on his 80th birthday.

Wish you were here.

This is what you wrote to me in 1996:

G,

You know, it won't take much encouragement from you for me to keep this up. It's this or journal writing which is about as self-indulgent as it gets. When I think of things I'd like to share with you it becomes clear that this might be all I have to give you. I don't have an estate I can pass along and, with any luck, I won't be leaving many unpaid bills behind.

Don't worry, I'm not sitting around contemplating my mortality but at some point you need to address your successes and failures. The area that has always concerned me has been the nature of curiosity and how it factors in literature of any sort. When I encourage you to investigate, what I'm really saying is that needs to be a permanent mind set. What I see around me, particularly in the media, is an absence of inquiry. Not in a traditional sense, anybody can ask the who, what, why, where, when, how. I mean a deeper, more quizzical, filled with wonder approach to humanity. Good crime reporters seem to have it but forms that permit this type of perusal are scarce. Genuine observations of the spirit, a consistent wonder at the human condition reflex-response fill the pages by only a choice number of writers. Plot and format drive most forms leaving little room for bemusement. But when a writer catches even a tiny glimpse or what drives people to behave in the way they do, BINGO! It eclipses technique, command of language, vast knowledge of a subject, wit, sarcasm, humor and any number of tricks of the trade. You can see it in cartoons and even more frequently in advertising where economy of space rules the day. I think the only notes that resonate in writing are the ones we manage to capture from our observations which we then filter through our own personal lens of understanding. When you read something you've written for someone else, you watch their eyes and evaluate their body language to determine their real response more than anything they can say. When you write something funny, there is no sound more terrible than the lack of a laugh and nothing more enjoyable than getting one. Why do some people remember certain lines form movies long after they have seen them? Often that's the only thing they remember, not who was in it, not what the title was or even a coherent understanding of what the story was about. A truly great line in any form reaps a reward unsurpassed by any check. Who comes to mind? Woody Allen, Will Rogers, Winston Churchill, Bruce Springsteen, Sam Shepard, Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln, Charles Collingwood, Ring Lardner - it's a tiny group. Others are out there, toiling away, just like you, looking for the edge, sorting out their impressions, throwing away reams of first attempts, knowing full well how uninformed they are and how ill-equipped any of us are in trying to crystallize our sensibilities…

I was 26 years old. I had no idea really, what you were asking me to do: to be curious about the world on a cellular level, to approach everything with a sense of wonder. Yet, that’s exactly the person you’ve made me into. I am first and foremost someone is captivated by the world and the people in it.

You did that for me.

And it has made my life so much richer, and occasionally, exhausting. I’m always looking deeper, finding meaning all around me. Dad, you made me realize that the ordinary is the extraordinary.

I somehow have passed this on to your grandchildren, as well. This tendency to make “genuine observations of the spirit,” to maintain “a consistent wonder at the human condition reflex-response”; these qualities are woven through them both. It’s in the questions they ask of strangers, in their sheer willingness to engage with the world. Inquiry, for them at 17 and 20, is already a permanent mind set.

So for your 80th birthday, this is what I’m giving you: to know that you were a huge success. That you not only accomplished your goal of becoming a writer, of touching thousands of readers with your words, but that you’ve also instilled in two young people you’ve never met a way of looking at the world that will never be lost on either of them, or on me.

I love you.

G