Morning Page #4: Uncle Doug
Today is an anniversary of tragedy and a national day of mourning. It's also my Uncle Doug's 65th birthday.
I think I'll talk about that.
On the 11th of September in 2001, when the world had its head turned in shock towards New York City, Washington, D.C., and an unnamed field in Pennsylvania, it was also my Uncle Doug's birthday. And I remember thinking in amongst my shock and horror at what had happened to my country, that my uncle would never be able to celebrate his birthday in quite the same way again.
It would never be just an anonymous day again. A day that, while he undoubtedly shared it with hundreds of thousands of people as a birthday or anniversary, was still, to him, uniquely his. Just as I, though I share the day with Richard Nixon, Joan Baez, and a sea of people whose names I'll never know, think of January 9 as uniquely mine. My special day. My birthday.
But Uncle Doug had his birthday stolen. It's not his day anymore. And not like my brother, whose birthday falls on Christmas Day. Chandler's birthday has never been only his. But Uncle Doug's was, and now it isn't, and I feel guilty that the reason I can now remember his birthday when I never could before, is because something tragic and horrible and unforgettable happened on his day.
He's my father's brother, and he's the man who seems to have inherited the spark of life most strongly from his mother, my grandmother. He's one of the smartest, gentlest, most loving, most lively, most wonderful people on the earth. And though he is far from me, he is dear to my heart in a way that awes me with its intensity. He and my aunt live, for the moment, in Bahrain. He works there as a consultant to the United Nations, I believe, as a city planner. He's lived all over the world, and I like to think some of my own wanderlust is somehow inherited from him.
I learned today that they are selling their home in Scotland. It was such a wonderful home. A place I felt so right in. And they say they will be returning to Argyll eventually, when they are done with overseas work, and buying a smaller house in that same rural part of the western highlands. But Mossknowe, their home in Blairmore, was a place unlike any other. A beautiful stone cottage right on the shores of Loch Long, with an enormous and beautiful half-wild garden stretching up a steep hill behind it to a nature preserve.
I'd only been there twice. Twice and I feel like I am losing a home away from home. How much more uprooted must my cousins feel. But then they themselves have grown up and made lives for themselves. And they, being the children of my uncle, have lived all over the world, in Scotland and Indonesia and the Netherlands, in the United States and Australia and England. Mossknowe was only the latest in a series of resting points for that branch of my family.
They are a branch, but they are a branch I wish I belonged to. Is it wrong that I feel more beloved, more belonging, to the family of my uncle than I do to my own? But I do. In temperament and personality, interests and beliefs, I'm so much more like them than I am the family who gave me birth. But then I, like my cousins, have my own life, my own path.
Still. Uncle Doug, you are the spiritual head of my family, in my heart. I love you, I miss you, and I wish you the happiest of birthdays.
I think I'll talk about that.
On the 11th of September in 2001, when the world had its head turned in shock towards New York City, Washington, D.C., and an unnamed field in Pennsylvania, it was also my Uncle Doug's birthday. And I remember thinking in amongst my shock and horror at what had happened to my country, that my uncle would never be able to celebrate his birthday in quite the same way again.
It would never be just an anonymous day again. A day that, while he undoubtedly shared it with hundreds of thousands of people as a birthday or anniversary, was still, to him, uniquely his. Just as I, though I share the day with Richard Nixon, Joan Baez, and a sea of people whose names I'll never know, think of January 9 as uniquely mine. My special day. My birthday.
But Uncle Doug had his birthday stolen. It's not his day anymore. And not like my brother, whose birthday falls on Christmas Day. Chandler's birthday has never been only his. But Uncle Doug's was, and now it isn't, and I feel guilty that the reason I can now remember his birthday when I never could before, is because something tragic and horrible and unforgettable happened on his day.
He's my father's brother, and he's the man who seems to have inherited the spark of life most strongly from his mother, my grandmother. He's one of the smartest, gentlest, most loving, most lively, most wonderful people on the earth. And though he is far from me, he is dear to my heart in a way that awes me with its intensity. He and my aunt live, for the moment, in Bahrain. He works there as a consultant to the United Nations, I believe, as a city planner. He's lived all over the world, and I like to think some of my own wanderlust is somehow inherited from him.
I learned today that they are selling their home in Scotland. It was such a wonderful home. A place I felt so right in. And they say they will be returning to Argyll eventually, when they are done with overseas work, and buying a smaller house in that same rural part of the western highlands. But Mossknowe, their home in Blairmore, was a place unlike any other. A beautiful stone cottage right on the shores of Loch Long, with an enormous and beautiful half-wild garden stretching up a steep hill behind it to a nature preserve.
I'd only been there twice. Twice and I feel like I am losing a home away from home. How much more uprooted must my cousins feel. But then they themselves have grown up and made lives for themselves. And they, being the children of my uncle, have lived all over the world, in Scotland and Indonesia and the Netherlands, in the United States and Australia and England. Mossknowe was only the latest in a series of resting points for that branch of my family.
They are a branch, but they are a branch I wish I belonged to. Is it wrong that I feel more beloved, more belonging, to the family of my uncle than I do to my own? But I do. In temperament and personality, interests and beliefs, I'm so much more like them than I am the family who gave me birth. But then I, like my cousins, have my own life, my own path.
Still. Uncle Doug, you are the spiritual head of my family, in my heart. I love you, I miss you, and I wish you the happiest of birthdays.