The Daily Jumble with Dad

“I can’t believe I didn’t get ‘mirth,” I say.

“Today’s was hard, wasn’t it?” My dad’s voice crackles over his car’s Bluetooth. I knew he’d call once I responded to his text. “I got the answer first, then unscrambled the words.”

“You know I can’t even look at the answer until I figure out each word,” I say.

“You’ll get it eventually,” he says. “How is your novel coming along?”

For the last five years, Monday through Saturday, my dad has sent me a screenshot of the word jumble puzzle from The Philadelphia Inquirer. The jumble has four words in boxes with letters scrambled. Within those jumbled words are circled letters.

First, you figure out the scrambled words. Then you collect the circled letters and unscramble them to figure out the answer, hinted at by a cartoon panel next to the word boxes. Usually, they are “groaners,” as my dad calls them.

A drawing of a teacher next to a globe with the phrase “For Earth, rotating once every 24 hours is _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ‘_ _ _ _ _”

(All in a day’s work.)

But our history with the jumble goes further back. My father, like his father, will sit at the table every morning with black coffee, a banana, and the “funny pages” folded twice so all he’ll see are the puzzles. He is there between 6 and 7 am, even on the weekends.

As a kid, it was comforting that this man who was such a mystery to me had a routine I could pin down. I felt mixed up; he seemed so sure: a sports-loving, fix-it-guy, strong and tough.

Maybe I was a mystery to him, too. I was the only daughter among three brothers. The little princess playing with Barbies, painting everything from gardening gloves to step stools pink, became the teen writing poetry as sobby pop-punk music blared through my headphones. If he took me out to eat, we’d sit in silence through pizza, greek salads, burgers and fries, only to come home and sit in more silence, watching a crime show. The show was always too scary, the food always too much. All I wanted was connection and more time with my dad.

In eighth grade, I was the only kid on my dad’s street going to middle school. Because I split my time between my mom’s house and my dad’s, the bus forgot about me. On the days I’d stand at the end of the lane, the bus would barrel past without stopping. After a month of my panic attacks when the bus did a no-show, my dad stepped in.

“I’ll drop you off at school on my way to work. “I can leave a little later. That way you won’t have to worry.”

This is when I discovered the jumble. He’d stop at the WaWa for his coffee, with his five quarters, and while he was inside I’d peek at his folded up paper. I’d try to unscramble the words before he got back with his coffee, but I could never put those circled letters and the picture together. I wasn’t a punny person—yet.

Even as a kid, I followed the rules and did things in order, so I’d methodically try to solve each word one by one.

One day, he noticed I was working on it. “You know, I always get the answer first,” he said. “The little words can be tough to figure out.”

When I went away to college, we had more to talk about. I joined a sorority; he had been in a fraternity. We’d chat about on-campus politics and global issues, our points of view on opposite sides but our values and end goals the same. After I turned 21 we’d have happy hour together when I was home for the holidays. I’d snag his morning paper, about to be recycled, and work on the jumble while we sipped wine and talked about how the world was crumbling.

After college, I found myself working in a call center for an eyewear company, talking on the phone 40 hours a week, then going home to write articles and essays for free. I was miserable. I’d cry on the subway to work and numbly stare at my phone on the way home. “It’s easier to find a job when you have a job,” my dad would tell me. He’d encourage me to keep looking and remind me not to quit before I had something else lined up.

“I know, I know,” I’d say. “I need a real job with health insurance.”

What I really wanted was to be a writer. And writers didn’t have benefits. Definitely not health insurance. Not that I knew of.

When my oldest brother got engaged, my dad, step-mom and other siblings came to New York to celebrate. Wine flowed through dinner and while we waited for the dessert, I let slip to one of my brothers that I was so deeply unhappy that I was afraid of what might happen; that I desperately wanted to quit my job but had nothing lined up. I had no answers.

“Marina, come sit with me,” my dad said. He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me in tight. “You know, maybe you should quit your job. You could start a blog or something.”

“What?” I was shocked that my dad knew what a blog was, let alone that he offered it as a viable out.

“I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten. Do what you need to do, I’ll always support you. You know that,” he said.

When I got into grad school and moved across the country to California, I worried about losing the connection we had so carefully built. That’s when the texts began.

With the three-hour time difference and my habit of waking up early, we always found time to chat. Especially because my dad made sure I could still work on the jumble when I couldn’t get The Philadelphia Inquirer. He began sending the jumble every day. If I missed a day or two, he’d call. We’d go over the puzzle and then we’d talk about our work; I’d offer advice on the emotions that erupt in an office and he’d give me story ideas.

Sometimes I think about the jumble that is life. The way that I feel so scrambled sometimes, trying to figure out who I am, what I’m supposed to be doing, how I’m going to “succeed.” And I think that maybe I’ll get a cartoon glimpse of clarity, that the answer should be right there, if only I can unlock the letters and words.

As soon as I wake up, I look at my phone. I don’t care if it’s a bad habit. I need to get a jump on the letters. If I do the jumble, everything else in my day will fall into place. I will get the answers I need. There, in my messages, from my dad, timestamped 3:54 AM, is a slightly blurry picture of the day’s jumble.