Woe to the Fishbowl Lifestyle of the Columnist

In writing a column five days a week, year after year, one inevitably reveals more of himself than he may want to.

As impersonal as I try to be, some aspects of my character, my private self, are likely to appear, as in a mirror darkly.

Thus, I would have assumed that I had shown myself as a gentle, thoughtful, helpful and loving husband, father and grandfather, and a good fellow in any society.

But I have not tried to conceal the fact that I dislike gardening, that I am addicted to sex and violence on television, that I attend Philharmonic concerts, the opera and the theater, and that I am an indifferent traveler.

Not a great deal there to like, I admit; on the other hand, I do not think of myself as a wholly unlikeable person, and especially not as a cold one.

As I say, however, if one writes about anything at all, one cannot help exposing his innermost nature, if only indirectly.

So perhaps reader Frank Biro of Van Nuys is correct when he complains that “I wonder if at home you are cold and formal with your family and pets?”

Mr. Biro notes that I apparently expect my wife to do the housework, and consider that I have done more than my share if I place a TV dinner in the micro.

I’m afraid Mr. Biro has struck close to the truth on that point. It is true that my wife does most of the housework, what little is left by our one-day-a-week housecleaner. She often consults me on what TV dinner to put in the micro, but the actual act of placing the dinner in the micro is usually left to her.

“I was under the impression,” Mr. Biro goes on, “that marriage was cooperative.”

Indeed it is. Having been married 51 years, I suggest to Mr. Biro that that fact alone implies that there has been a great deal of cooperation. I may not cook, but my contributions to our mutual well-being have been too numerous to list.

“Then there are your sons’ wives. They call you ‘Mr. Smith.’ Do your grandchildren also stay forbidden to call you ‘Grandpa’?”

Only my French daughter-in-law calls me Mr. Smith. My Italian daughter-in-law calls me Jack. My five grandchildren call me “Grandpa,” or “Grampa.” In my French daughter-in-law’s family, a father-in-law was called monsieur. She does not care to defer to American tradition in that respect. I am not foolish enough to forbid any of them anything.

It is true that my wife and I do not use terms of endearment. I call her Denny, she calls me Jack. We have never used honey or dear or love or any other such words. If that implies that we are cold, so be it.

Mr. Biro’s criticism of my treatment of animals is somehow more galling. “If you feed them they are fortunate,” he says. “If they disappear . . . joy . . . no more requirements for you. . . . For the sake of all who share your private life, have a little humanity.”

Mr. Biro evidently refers to my report on the disappearance of our mixed Yorkie, Fluff. Fluff was at least 15 years old, deaf, blind and disoriented. Evidently she had even lost her sense of smell. She simply vanished. We never found any trace of her. Fluff’s joy in life had long since ended, and I was not overcome with grief at her probable demise.

I asked my wife if she thought I was cold. She laughed mischievously. The difference between us, I think, is that my glass is half empty, hers is half full.

I asked my French daughter-in-law if she thought I was cold. She said she knew I was not cold, but sometimes I seemed to be off in another world.

That’s it exactly. I may sometimes seem aloof, or distracted, not because I am cold, but because I am always thinking about the higher things.

Sometimes I tend to speculate on our origins, on the consolations of religion, on the deterioration of our planet, on the greed that corrupts our society, on the meaning of infinity, on the state of my cardiovascular system, on the curse of racism, on the uncertainty of life, for dogs and human beings alike.

When caught up in these musings I may seem cold, especially if I am in the midst of gaiety; but I assure Mr. Biro and anyone else who cares, that I am none the less high-spirited, good-natured, generous, warm and vulnerable, and all anyone has to do is offer me a glass of wine to bring me around. Sometimes I’m the life of the party.

I do think it might be more dignified, however, if the kids called me grandfather.