Remembering my Dad’s brother

Do we then make void the law through faith?

God forbid.

We establish the law.

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Romans 3 : 31 Exodus 20 : 14

Here is a strange start.

This memory is not saying:

Don’t marry a woman twenty years older than you. ( but consider that you will be 45 when she is 65.)

Don’t go to another country where you will prosper. ( Remember that connections in your home country are important.)

Don’t become too intimately involved with those you council. ( but consider how free you are to give your whole life to support that individual.)

This memory is saying:

Don’t work with Asbetos ( unless you have the correct protection).

Dad’s brother could work with wrought iron like his sister, who could create dresses . Uncle John had dark hair and big green eyes with a twinkle. He was smart physically and mentally. He trained as a blacksmith, and in our home, we had a nest of three wrought iron  tables that fitted into each other without a hitch.

He fell in love at nineteen, much to my father’s disgust with a woman of 40 years old. Why do I know this? Dad often said: ” I told him not to.”

They were a busy couple who we didn’t see much,but when we did, it was memorable. Our aunt was a secretary and because Uncle John wanted to study, he did. She worked to pay the fees. He did very well. So well that he thought America would be the place to become even better, and they went, and he did do better. He became quite special.

Then they came to stay with us in Bulawayo. Uncle John was in top form: twinkle in his eyes, cracking jokes, teasing us girls, and in the sharpest, well-cut clothes. Nothing wrong with all that. Our aunt was now 65. She was quiet as she sat on the verandah in her  brown skirt with a cream blouse. Her ankles accidently left in a patch of sun so that they turned red and swollen. She was terribly quiet and a little sad. We wondered if she wasn’t perhaps ill. We were kind, but it was hard to make conversation with the high jinks of Uncle John around.

The time with us in Bulawayo past with them  next going to stay on the farm and then very soon going back to America.

It may have been longer, but if my memory is correct, it was only a year when Uncle John returned with a pretty faced, red head with very big feet. She was young and needed council. Her husband was doing porn and she had had enough. Well, she got herself a boyfriend, our uncle John.

The story goes as it usually does, he got divorced, got married to his new girl, piously became father to two young daughters, and then, within two years my aunt ( his 68-year-old ex-wife) died.

A few years on, one  night, there was a telephone call. It was uncle John he was breathless and wanted to say a final farewell to his brother Bill.

Yes, he was dying. It was Asbestosis he had, from working with the stuff to make hen houses!

Life as it is !

Whom do I write for? I write for the story. Each story, it seems to me , knows best how it should be told. As I once put my ear to the railroad track, I listen now for the voice of my story.

Jerry Spinelli

This memory took a while to write. It didn’t want out, but here it is. Love and loyalty are strange things.

Sandy 🙂