My dad also did a bang-up Bing Crosby. I loved it when he sang, and we never had to wait very long for it. He’d sing while putting sugar in his coffee, while buffing his shoes, or for no reason at all. He’d make up songs about us, the more ridiculous the better: To the tune of “Val-deri, Val-dera,” he’d sing “Janeeree, Jane-erah.” My nickname became simply Eree-Erah. He added –anikins or -erotomy to the end of anyone’s name. My older sister was Julie-anikins, my younger brother, Bob-erotomy. One of his favorite joyous exclamations was “Pon-TIFF! Pon-TIFF!” from the word “pontifical,” which was his way of saying “fabulous.” And “My cup runneth over” was boiled down to “My cup! My cup!” Speaking of cup, coffee was coffiticus, my mom was L.T. (Long Thing, because she was tall), and the phone was the telephonic communicator. We would roll our eyes or feign embarrassment—but we all wanted to be the subject of Dad’s silliness, to be a part of his joy.
The Lynch family in red, white, and blue for the 4th of July, circa 1964 (I’m on the right).
Each day, when Dad came home from his job at the bank, the first thing he’d do was put his keys and spare change into the saddlebags of the little ceramic Chihuahua that sat on his dresser. Then he and my mom would indulge in their nightly cocktail ritual with their favorite drink, Ten High Whiskey. Dad had his with ginger ale and Mom had hers with water, and they’d toast with the words “First today, badly needed.” Dad would say, “L.T., let’s get some atmosphere!” and they’d dim the lights and start singing something from My Fair Lady, Dad harmonizing perfectly to my mom’s melody.
Banks were closed on Wednesday, and my dad loved his day off. It started at Double D (Dunkin’ Donuts) because he loved their coffiticus and the chocolate cake donut. Wearing his blue elasticized “putter pants,” he would check off items on his to-do list. He was forever singing something goofy under his breath; “liver, bacon, onions …” was a favorite. He wanted us to be as enthusiastic as he was about his accomplishments. If Wednesday’s lawn work went unnoticed for its superior greenness, he’d plead, “Rave a little! Rave a little!”
Dad goes after Mom with our new electric knife.
My mom, Eileen Lynch (nee Carney), was, and still is, gorgeous. Tall and blond, with navy blue eyes and beautiful long legs, she never failed to turn heads. She always had a nice tan in the summer. And she’s a clotheshorse who never pays full price … ever … unlike her middle kid. To this day (and she is now in her eighty-second year) she puts on an outfit every morning. She’s classy down to her socks. She would kill me if she saw the comfort shoes I sneak under those long award-show gowns, especially because we have been known to watch hours and hours of What Not to Wear together. I share her love of fashion— I just don’t have her eye, or the figure to look fabulous in anything off-the-rack like she does.
Mom is half-Swedish and half-Irish, but the Swedish tends to win out. She can get sentimental, but for the most part, she’s strong and independent and doesn’t suffer fools, show-offs, or braggarts, and of course I’m nothing if not a foolish bragging show-off. Somehow, she manages to love me anyway.
But when Mom opens her mouth, she’s hilarious, though mostly she doesn’t mean to be. She’s a bit spacey, and her synapses don’t fire as fast as the rest of ours. She has always been unperturbed by her oblivion—and barely fazed when she finally gets the joke.
Her eyeglasses were always full of fingerprints, smudges, and pancake batter. I’d take them off her head, wash them with dish detergent, then put them back on. “Wow!” she’d exclaim, seeing what she had been missing.
She is absolutely frank with her opinions and literal in her interpretations. In our family she was the perfect “straight man” to the hijinks.
Our house ran like clockwork. All five of us sat down to dinner at the same time every day, after which Mom would have another cocktail, and maybe another. Dad would watch the news, and at 10 P.M. he’d eat a Hershey bar with almonds and settle in for Johnny Carson’s monologue. After that, it was time for bed.
My parents truly loved each other, and almost always got along. If you ask Mom now about their life together, the only negative comment she’d come up with is “Sometimes he’d bug me.” She had to have at least one criticism; she’s Swedish. Dad, on the other hand, had no criticism of my mother. And for a man in the sixties, my dad really got women—he understood and loved them. Once, when he had to go buy my mom Kotex at the store, the guy at the counter, embarrassed, slipped them into a paper bag. He started to carry them outside, so my dad could take the bag where no one would see, but my dad just laughed. “It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t need to sneak out the back door.”
Apparently my mother was unaware that witches don’t have vampire teeth or wear sunglasses. With Dad and first grandbaby, Megan.
He also liked women’s company more than men’s. For a number of years when I was a kid, we went on vacation to summer cottages in Paw Paw, Michigan. The guys would all go play golf while the women sat on the beach. My dad would stay with the women, sitting under an umbrella in his swim trunks, with Sea & Ski slathered all over his pasty white body, chatting the afternoon away.
THOUGH WE WERE ONLY TWO YEARS APART, JULIE AND I were totally different. From the moment I was born, she was looking to create her own family because she now wanted out of ours. She loved dolls, little kids, and telling people what to do. She was thin and pretty, with long blond hair—the Marcia Brady to my Jan.
But Julie had a great sense of humor—we all did, thanks to our parents, who taught us by example that being the butt of the joke is a badge of honor. Julie was the space cadet, so we Lynches would mock her in a high-pitched dumb-blonde voice that made her giggle. We were not a thin-skinned people.
And although Julie and I fought like crazy, we insisted on sharing not only the same room but the same bed the whole time I was growing up. I still don’t know why. I mean, we hated each other. When I recently asked her what was up with that, she had no answer either. On the same ironic note, we also wrote words to The Newlywed Game theme song about how much we loved being sisters. “Everybody knows who we are / We’re not brothers, you’re a bit too far / We are sisters by far!” I shared the writing credit for this masterpiece with Julie, but in truth, I wrote it all by myself.
My brother, Bob, was the much-awaited son. Dad was ecstatic when he came along two years after me, thinking he’d finally get to partake in the classic American father-son ritual of playing catch. But Bob was shy and not athletic, and he couldn’t have cared less about classic American rituals. I, on the other hand, was a huge tomboy and wanted nothing more than to play baseball from sunup to sundown. I would have killed to play Little League baseball, unlike Bob, who dutifully put on his little uniform every Saturday but just hated it. My dad did enjoy throwing the ball with me, but I always felt like he’d rather have played with Bob.
Unlike me, Bob was quiet, and he did everything he could to avoid getting any attention. Even when he was little, he refused to wear clothes that matched because he didn’t want it to look like he’d tried. He just wanted to blend into the background, which I, the family ham, did not understand at all. Dad would clap him on the back and say, “That’s my boy!” which only caused Bob to shrink in embarrassment. All I could think was I’ll be your boy!
I always felt like I got the middle-child shaft. My parents had their hands full with whatever Julie was demanding at the moment, or they were worried about why Bob was hiding in his room listening to Led Zeppelin. I was the easy one, and I thought that would get me something. I kept offering myself up to occupy the space Bob kept turning down. But I just didn’t have a place. So, of course, the frustration would build and build until I finally pitched a fit: “No one pays attention to ME!”