Diary
Christmas at Patricia’s, this is the first thing i think of when i think of Uncle Georgie; that and the sound of walnuts cracking. Entering into Patricia’s warm kitchen from out of the cuttingly wet Cape Cod cold we were always greeted by the aroma of wonderful foods roasting in ovens. Being Marcelines we never failed to linger, sneaking nibbles out of this or that as the ovens’ warmth thawed our bones–gods know there was rarely an overabundance of warmth between us. For me, my yaya’s absence was always sorely felt (she was my surrogate mother). We’d stand around bickering about this and that and Uncle Georgie would take advantage of our distraction, making a silent bee line for the couch and the dish of mixed, shelled nuts on the coffee table. In the kitchen, Patricia would shoo us out of her way with a good natured show of maternal bossiness. In the living room, we’d find Uncle Georgie, covered in walnut crumbs, relishing his victory. He’d worked his way through every single last walnut in the bowl.
He was actually my Great Uncle Georgie, but the Great part never stuck for me. Not that he wasn’t a swell guy, but because of his almost adolescent naivety. At first i was terribly frightened of him. He was the spidery old man who sat all day behind a door at the end of the hall of my Grandmother’s house. A door which leaked the scent of cigarettes and snack food. To say that Uncle Georgie liked to keep to himself would be an understatement. Uncle Georgie seemed to make solitude his life’s mission. He was like some kind of perverse twentieth century anti-Narcissus, perpetually bound to smoke religiously, kneeling before his television screen and eating Wise potato chips. This read as sinister to my seven year old psyche; today i pause to wonder how it reads in retrospect. Was he content or hiding? It’s likely he suffered ridicule, after all. He was a mentally challenged child of a Greek immigrant family growing up on Cape Cod among Wasps and Baptists. Maybe his withdrawal was a survival strategy? It seems likely, but i’d like to think he just didn’t really care one way or the other, that he was satisfied with his life, that he didn’t need other people the way i seem to.
He was a kind man, in a put upon sort of way. He could never say no; he could never not complain about having to do whatever had been asked either. I was an attention starved, nightmare of an adolescent who never hesitated to ask a favor. During the summer he’d give me rides to work in exchange for gas money. I’d always commandeer the radio with contemporary Christian music and gospel, which he hated, but i was bratty enough to out scream his protests. I feel bad now for treating him so badly and i regret never thanking him for helping me to execute my escape plan.
As a teen i had a fairly common fantasy: save money, get car, save more money, move out and live my own life free of my parents’ abuse. I did escape and have, but for one or two rent free months living with my father and stepmother, managed to support myself for a decade as of this June past. I have also managed to put myself through college and write some plays. I wonder if i could’ve achieved as much without Uncle Georgie’s help. How would i have made any money if i couldn’t find a way to work?
In late June my aunt called to tell me that the lung cancer he’d ignored since it was diagnosed in the 90’s had now metastasized to his brain, liver, and bones. He had three to six months to live. I promised myself i’d go see him in the hospital, but his death came in only six weeks and my promise was thwarted. Well, thwarted is the wrong word. I procrastinated away my chance to say goodbye and thank Uncle Georgie for his forbearance and aid. This i regret since what kept me away was fear, not of death or of sickness, but of opening the door to the past. You see, in my mind i had said goodbye to Uncle Georgie a decade ago as i fled from my painful familial ties and my tempestuous relationship with my father, as i began my quest to extricate my identity completely from the clan i had never really felt a part of in the first place, an impossible quest which required avoiding any and all contact with my past.
I wonder if Uncle Georgie was attempting a similar feat by hiding away the days of his life in his dark, smoky room. I also wonder if he'd care at all if i had gone to see him, but that's something i always wonder when it comes to my family. My escape was, after all, more of a retreat. A retreat from my family, yes, but most of all a retreat from my own self-loathing doubt that my family cares for me at all, a painful doubt which i learned could be numbed by fooling myself that i was, in fact, rejecting them even though it was i who felt rejected. This illusion could only be maintained by pretending they didn't exist at all and, even though i've vowed to stop running, i still find myself striving to maintain my illusions of familial liberation, most of the time quite unconsciously. This very same subconscious compulsion kept me from fulfilling my promise to myself. The fact is that Georgie would have cared, he had always cared. I wish i had let him know that i cared too.
