For the first time in my life, last week I wrote a letter to my uncle.
Technically, it was an email, but had I lived in a country with reliable postal service, it would have been the old fashioned kind of letter -- you know, the kind that's hand-written with your own distinctive cursive and favourite fountain pen on luxurious stationary, then neatly folded into a matching envelope, addressed in impeccable calligraphy, fitted with postage and then graced with an original seal . . . or am I the only one who gets a wee bit giddy about giving my attention to all those details? Seriously, I get all giggly inside (and outside!) on the rare occasions when I find just such a masterpiece delivered to me; sadly, none will be forthcoming even if sent while I continue to live in this particular corner of the world in a city with less-than-Vatican-calibre postal service.
But back to the email: do you have a family member or two with whom you've kind of gradually just fallen out of touch? That's the sort of scenario we're talking about here. Honestly, I have nothing but fond memories of my dear uncle -- so it's not that there was an ugly feud or anything that caused us decisively to go our separate ways; but somehow I can't recall a real conversation between he and I in well over a decade.
And so, one day while on the phone with my grandmother, I was asking her about the family. When she got to telling me about my uncle (he's the only one from that family, so there's no risk of playing favourites!), I confessed to her how long it has been since I remember actually spending some time with him. I then went on to tell her of two very specific wonderful memories I have from when I was very young -- memories in which my uncle was the key actor. Grandma, in her very matter-of-fact-yet-loving way, up and told me that I should just contact him.
And so I did! I send him a long, detailed email, first telling him about our recent news and life in Panama, and then leading up to thanking him for those two specific memories I have of him -- memories that come to mind immediately every time I think about him. And now I'll share them with you:
I was barely seven years old; my mother spent much of the afternoon getting my four-year-old sister and I ready for a date with our uncle. She styled our hair and dressed us in our prettiest dresses, and we were ready and waiting when our uncle arrived in his shiny black car and dressed in a suit, carrying two long-stem roses -- a pink one for my sister and a yellow one for me -- and took us to the city to see The Nutcracker Ballet. I felt like the luckiest girl in all the world!
The second memory comes from around the same time period, but it was a sort of ongoing thing: somewhere, in some little booklet of jokes for kids, my sister came across one that said:
Q: Why did the banana kiss the cucumber?
A: Because it had a peel (appeal)!
Neither she nor I understood it, but when we told it to our uncle he laughed as though it were the most clever joke around -- and from then on we told it to him every time we saw him for years to come!
Those memories, one-time events though they may be, have encouraged me repeatedly over the years. To me they are tangible reminders of love from my family -- specifically from my dear uncle.
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