I relate with the intro theme of Quantum Leap when the female narrator says Dr Sam Beckett is "striving to put right what once went wrong".   Reflecting and grieving through the hurts, losses and deprivations I suffered as a child growing up in an alcoholic home, I too go back in time to reparent and to nurture with understanding, forgiveness and much love my inner wounded, fractured child back to wellness and to wholeness.  It is too a love story for part of God's healing touch came through the love and support of a good woman, my wife.

So, though not unaffected, I survived my father's alcoholism and family dysfunction as J.D. Salinger wrote with my "f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s intact".  What could have destroyed me has through God's transforming grace made me a better and stronger person.

Others may identify with experiences for I too feel a belonging brotherhood and sisterhood bond with other children of alcoholics.  I know you.  I see you. 

It matters not if the drinking parent is famous or the town drunk, whether one lives in a shack or a mansion, whether the family drives a rusty junk car or a limousine.   Is it any less shaming if an alcoholic parent is an actor being ridiculed before millions on the TONIGHT SHOW?  At least mostly only the neighborhood knew my father was a drunk.

My father died years ago, and I have since moved on, but his drinking will forever impact my life.  It is the prism from which I learned of God and His world.  Consciously and subconsciously, it colors my perceptions and influences my thoughts.  It affects and shapes my values and the formation of my conscience.   It haunts my dreams.  My father's alcoholism and its rippling effects have become a part of my existence.  God only knows how different a person I would be if I grew up in a normal family?  Would I be more or less than who I am today?   Popeye the sailor man noted, "I am what I am."  In some God mysterious, odd estimated measure, I am and always will be the Drunk's Kid.