I've been doing some intentional thinking about family as part of my Lenten journey this year. It feels like a pilgrimage in some respects, but the journey is into the once-known as opposed to the unknown and it's proving to be more challenging than I anticipated. I've recognized at least one true thing: Some skeletons were meant to stay in the closet. But happily, some are meant to be brought back into the light, and so it has been for my Uncle Ralph, husband of my father's younger sister, Christine,
My Uncle Ralph introduced me to the Life of the Mind. He was and remains the smartest man I ever met. It's taken me a long time to realize this because he was so unpretentious about his brilliance. He was also married to my Aunt Chris, who could light up a room before she was even in the same county. She was from another planet. Red hair, freckles, youthful even in old age, she had a mischievous smile and a wicked wit in my child's memory. "Bobby, would you like onions on that mayonnaise sandwich for lunch?", i.e., an endless stream of tongue-n-cheek one-liners some of which I still remember with a mixture of joy and embarrassment. She could always make me laugh, even at myself.
As for my Uncle Ralph, he was an engineer-type, smart, clever, serious, sometimes aloof but never disconnected from what was happening in the moment. He had sad but smiling eyes and a weather-worn face reminiscent of a younger Arnold Palmer. He spoke quickly (for a southerner) in clipped tones and his knowledge base was so broad that it was sometimes hard to follow what he was saying, as though his brain was always working overtime.
Uncle Ralph's Biblical profile would fix him somewhere between Jeremiah and Ezekiel: Intense and weird, like some of those third and fourth century Christian Era desert ascetics in Egypt. He was a compulsive tinkerer especially with electronics and often could be seen with a transistor radio on his belt with an ear plug attached, like a 1950's prototype of the Ipod. He came up with stuff that now seems far ahead of its time. My particular favorites were the skateboards and scooters he fashioned out of 2X4's and roller skate wheels. It's a wonder my cousins and I are still alive since this was in the hilly suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama where I would visit them in the summer. I would return home to Savannah with jeans permanently stained with Red Mountain clay and the heels worn out of my sneakers.
Uncle Ralph, Aunt Chris and my cousins came to our tiny house in Savannah for Christmas one year, when I was six or seven. Like my cousins, life, for me, revolved around Santa's visit on Christmas eve. However, a couple of days before Santa was to arrive that year, I was "busted" by my Uncle Ralph when he caught me looking under a bed where one of the adults had hidden Santa's Big Present. I had already started to suspect the whole Santa-down-the-chimney thing and sure enough, there it was: The big Santa gift for me and my cousins mysteriously hidden away in the guest bedroom. A swat on my bottom and a very stern look from Uncle Ralph sent a strong message that I will never, ever forget: Always be humble about newly discovered insights!
Uncle Ralph, like my own father, died too young. Cigarettes and traditional southern cooking are some of the things I still hold responsible for those and other untimely deaths of people I have loved and who loved me. But Uncle Ralph's demise seems like a loss larger than most. His mind was a beautiful gift from God to all who knew him.
And about that word in the title, "Antidisestablishmentarianism": According to my Uncle Ralph it was (and still is, according to Wikipedia) the longest word in the English language. Google it and see for yourself. I was seven when he taught me this and much more. And the funny thing is that after 34 years as an Episcopal priest in the American version of the Church of England, I probably owe my professional career to those activist antidisestablishmentarianists!
What Saints are hidden in Your closet?!
Bob Stephenson
No comments:
Post a Comment