Say Uncle

Dear You,

I chose my uncles very well. Uncle Doral was at least interesting, even if beer and baseball were his main passions and he died quite a long time ago now.

But I'm thinking of my mother's youngest brother, Kenneth; and my father's youngest brother, Vaughn, mostly.

Kenneth was a Marine in my earliest memory. He visited with a chess set, and I recall sitting on that old porch way out in the country in southern Ohio, where my father had rented a farmhouse. We sat on the steps and he patiently taught me the pieces and how they move and a bit about the strategy . . . then he beat me game after game after game. Even when I was grown up and living far away, we managed to have a game during our occasional visits, and twice we had an extended game by exchanging moves by postcards. He still won most of them. These days, every time I bring up my computer chess program, I think what it would be like to have just one more game with Ken. I miss him.

And I miss Vaughn, too. He was only nine years older than I, and I can still see him when he visited us -- in another farmhouse, this time closer to Columbus -- wearing his Coast Guard uniform. He brought firecrackers, which in our house were Forbidden Fruit indeed! Vaughn would get a Maxwell House coffee can, lead us three boys out to the yard, light a cherry bomb and toss it under the upended can and sit on it as it exploded, leaping into the air as if surprised. When I got older he taught me to play blackjack, relieving me of my allowance money but then treating me to a pizza. And as the years wore on, he was a correspondent as we explored the family genealogy.

On my family tree, it is probably Vaughn who hangs nearest the heartwood of the trunk.

A Third Wheel

Brandon has three grandfathers: his mother's father, his father's father . . . and me. I'm his father's mother's husband, Grandpa Paul. The other day, on a visit to Brandon's home, his mother asked him to introduce my wife and me to two of his friends. The first was easy: this is my Grandma Kristine. Then he paused.
"And who's that?" prompted his mother, pointing at me.
"Well," Brandon offered. "It's kinda complicated."
Yes, it is. Brandon is only 10, but already he has figured out that "family" is kinda complicated these days.

My wife and I have a dozen little kids who refer to us in various forms of grandpa/grandma. My daughter's children have a Grandma Kristine, but they never met Grandma Becky, who died before any of them were born. My wife's sons' children have the complicated situation I've already described. When they were really little, it was easier for them. Now the oldest girls are entering the teen years, and they're in charge of explaining the genealogy to their brothers. I'll leave it to them.

And I've not even dared here to wade into the swamp of family get-togethers, such as Christmas or birthday parties.