I wish I had known my grandfather when he wasn’t insane.

The majority of my memories are sad and pathetic. I remember my grandpa as a man who always complained about his health. He taught me the word hypochondriac before I began studying for my SATs. He was balding, had a huge gut and barely knew how to take care of himself.

He was scared of anything and everything. The first time my brother and I ever experienced a thunderstorm was in 1989 in Los Angeles. My parents left to go food shopping at Vons and the storm came while the old man was watching us. We were frightened because it was the first time we heard thunder, but my grandpa’s intense screaming only made it worse. He had us huddled in a corner of a room, waiting for the storm to pass. Fortunately, my parents knew this would happen so they immediately left the supermarket and saved us from his anxiety.

My grandpa followed us almost everywhere we moved. We briefly lived with him in New York City for two years before we headed to Los Angeles. My grandpa moved out shortly and stayed in the same house as us for years until my father neared a mental breakdown and forced him to get an apartment. When we moved to Delaware in 1994, my grandpa moved out a year or so later.

We were afraid to ask him how he was doing because it always leaded into a diatribe about incompetent doctors, medicines not working, and problems that only he knew about and physicians seemed to ignore.

But I do have a few fond memories. When I was 5 years old, Poppy (as he made us call him) insisted on giving me art lessons. He taught me how to draw shapes. He instructed on how a face should be illustrated and how shading can make something seem real. When I got older, he bought me watercolors and let me paint on paper plates and the old printer paper that had the edges with circles that you had to rip off. I didn’t care much for it at the time, but I really wish I had paid more attention. I have a love for art now and I wish my interest would have been sparked earlier. Maybe I could have pursued it as a career.

The man’s story is intriguing. A blond haired, blue eyed Jew who grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina (clearly, I got none of his genes); he wasn’t the tallest of men, but he had a way with words. He married a young Jewish lady from New York City and moved up north. He came from a family of gamblers. His father had owned one of the only liquor stores in North Carolina immediately after the 18th Amendment was appealed in 1933. His family became instantly rich, but gambled it all away. My grandfather received these genes, unfortunately, and gambled his savings away at casinos, lottos, races and games. He was a risk-taking man but always ended up on the sad side of defeat. The world was against him, he’d say. Maybe he was right.

I wish I would have known him when he was younger and was a Drum Major for Duke. He never went to college, but somehow weaseled himself into marching with the Duke band. He was always proud of my musical talent and probably wish I had taken it seriously. Sometimes I wish I had taken it seriously too.

So maybe I’m giving the old man a bad rap. He had some good points… but they were muddled by crazy. When I look back on our relationship together before he passed away in 2001, the highlights were those art lessons. We sat at a table in our backyard in Los Angeles. He’d bring the materials, I would just copy whatever he did. I’m sure my drawings were a disgrace to the lead company that created the pencils, but he made me feel like I was on the right track to being the next Picasso. He kept saying how much potential I had and that I should really practice more. “If you practice,” he’d say, “no one can stop you.”

Twenty years later, I’m practicing again. I’ve taken up drawing and painting and I can get lost for hours and days when I have a brush in my hand and acrylics in reach. It’s one of the only things I can do for extended periods of time without getting bored or restless.

I may not always be the best listener, but your message will eventually sink in. Despite his anxiety and fears and conspiracy theories, I am grateful that he took the time to give me those lessons. They were brief and often erratic and I mostly didn’t understand why I was the one who had do them instead of swimming, swinging or salivating in front of the tv. But now I get it. And I can’t wait until I get the chance to teach someone else how to draw crooked noses and ungodly large foreheads.