Letter to my half-sister

Lise Kunkel
Jul 21, 2017 · 4 min read

NPR news reports an earthquake killed 2 on the Greek Island of Kos this morning. May they rest in peace. My thoughts out-volume the radio as I’m driving into the office early to drop off paperwork: A Greek Island. Which Greek Island? She’s out there somewhere. Could be. I’m laughing as the light turns green.

My father told me from his bed one afternoon, leaning up from his pillows just enough for me to understand the confidence of the moment, “Don’t tell your mother.”

What a hook for any kid — even at 42. I leaned forward in my chair to encourage him.

“I had a wife and a child, before you, on a Greek Island. Honey, your mother doesn’t know.”

That was it. He leaned back into his pillows satisfied that he’d imparted the important.

As sometimes occurs in the end of life, like a happy drunk, my 67 year old father possessed an unwittingly entertaining quality as his lucidity waxed and waned. I do recall him mentioning the Russian mafia but just as quickly understanding that his fear was baseless. There were moments for him when I was in my twenties again and in nursing school, not yet a mother and a wife, then other moments when we talked about the day’s news and he was right there— Linda McCartney comes to mind, she died less than two weeks before my father and he quipped about her good fortune in getting to leave before him.

He’d always had a fascination with the Greek: modern and ancient. My mother and he finally travelled there ten years or less before his death in 1998. They went with Greek friends, natives, John and Maria whom they’d met in Chapel Hill. By that time, my father could speak a smattering of Greek and his study of Ancient Greek was well underway.

Dad was tall and blond, blue-eyed and fair-skinned, not a Greek bone in his body. His passion though, was most certainly a direct descendent of the Hellenic branch of the Indo-European family. Had to be. How else to explain his fascination with all things Greek.

He joined a study group in the 1960s, which met in the evenings on our neighborly Philadelphia street in Germantown. A small group of erudite adults in their thirties and forties set out to teach themselves Greek from text books. Not your average entertainment.

To my Father, the Greek myths were illustrations of life– self help tales. He enjoyed each of us four children all the more once we hit the fourth grade where our Quaker school, Germantown Friends, introduced the study of Greece. We were now conversation worthy. He would quiz us in the manner of Socrates, attempt to eek out of our forming brains some small bit of critical thinking, any indication that we had taken in the philosophical importance of a particular Greek myth and made personal meaning of it.

Weekend walks in the woods with my father and our dogs, Sam (a dirty white mutt with a two-toned brown spot on his hind end) & Lassie (a German Shepard mix) were one-on-one. This is where the quizzing took place. This is where I learned to ask something of myself and to reflect on my own stories. My Father would pace the conversation, not holding me to his long intellectual stride; he was genuinely interested in what I thought. Normally, well reasoned opinions and intellectually sound theories held his critical regard. However, he allowed for underdeveloped thoughts on these walks; he was not always this understanding of the young traveling mind, impatient as he was for its arrival. But on these outings, he made space for us the way we were.

Through these walks in the Wissahickon with my Dad, I developed a deep love of the woods and a deep respect for ideas — before I was twelve. By twelve, he had lost part of his audience — we kids understood the value of the weekend and the pull of our friends. His basic imprintable work as a parent, though certainly not done, had peaked.

I went on to develop a wonderful adult relationship with my father. He was attentive, wrote me long letters regularly, shared his work, championed me in my endeavors, and was ever willing to tell me when I was not up to snuff. I continued to value his perspective though I was not much of a critical thinker myself in those early adult years. I was better as his vicarious free spirit, and his walking companion when I came into town. We shared short stories and poems, red wine, and escapades; we had writing in common. He was a very bright man with an agile memory, challenging sometimes for me to process at his level but mostly a pleasure to try.

He managed to accomplish so much at my mother’s side. They were beautifully balanced. Not just his accomplishments as a writer, a life long student, a lawyer, and a photographer but the learning to connect to people in a more ordinary way — my mother modeled this well, so natively intuitive with people. He became a more emotionally empathetic and accessible human in his middle years. Just as I became less of his vicarious free spirit. We grew into ourselves as I imagine you have.

I hope, my dear half-sister, wherever you are, that you loved him as well. That on hot Mediterranean nights over a glass of Ouzo you talked about Plato and Socrates and that he told you at least one or two stories from his college years — the silly ones where you got to meet a young, awkward man, wanting to dispense with his Apollo for just a moment, and to bring on his Dionysus.

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