"Visited" by My Uncle Sam-- 40 years after his death
Hi Dailykos people. I don't write political diaries anymore here after almost eight years on this site. But, I still like to share personal experiences, and sometimes it catches on with others, and my world has then for a moment or so gotten larger like an extended network of friends and family.
Over the last month or so I've gone through a personal transformation at an age-- well I won't be exact but my earliest memories include Franklin Delano Roosevelt-when he was alive. I've decided to turn outward, not to change our political culture, although I do have some limited goals there, but in volunteering. First I became a volunteer at our local zoo. I'm not saying which one now, as I signed an agreement that I would not write, or say anything in public, including on the internet, "relating to this zoo, and if so, I would be subject to disciplinary action." I wanted to do this so I agreed to everything, dress like they want me to dress, use only prescribed lingo, and never never complain--not that there is anything to find wrong with such a worthy organization.
I also volunteered, and was selected by our City Council to accept membership in a new commission with vague authority as I wrote to the council in my application letter:
"The open nature of this commission is indicated in the words, "includes, but is not limited to......" and lists a wide array of serious areas such as criminal activity. ... the informational meeting must refer to the the acquisition of such facts by the process of interviews and investigations.
It's one thing to spend time at a Zoo and help the visitors find their favorite animal, or even as already happened in my first few days, help find a missing child and attempt to get a keeper to do something about an injured primate. As I was trying to make my newly assigned radio function, and the other people watching behind the glass, the gentle soothing touching by one of the primates (can't give the species as it might identify the zoo) touched me deeply. And this animal was injured by another of the group, so along with anger, even violence there is an empathy that probably was close to identical to their phylogenetic cousins on the other side of the glass.
But to try to shape a municipal citizen's committee into focusing on meaningful criminal activity that is not covered by existing local, state or federal law, is not only a challenge, but potentially, to the degree it becomes effective, a threat to many established groups. The one area that citizen groups do better than official entities is uncovering crime under color of law. which offends powerful groups. Courage is easy at a keyboard, even more so with a pseudonym, but it tends to fade as one not only gives his real name and with it his address-- but a public figure, even a Commissioner, becomes vulnerable to personal attacks that would be libelous if directed at a private individual.
Ralph Nader, Thomas Dewey, Eliot Spitzer and Earl Warren---what these men have in common is they all went against major powerful groups, and parlayed these early actions into political fame- or infamy, depending on one's point of view. At my age, and at this local level, I more and more ask myself, "Why exactly are you doing this?" So, I've been under stress, while also paradoxically feeling better than I have in years. Learning the very complex layout of this zoo has been an intellectual challenge, that for the first time is the opposite of the forgetting that increases with age. It's like a first day in a new school-- elementary or university, it's the same sense of challenge of mastering a new different world.
"O.K. so your telling us about your personal story, but the title was about a visit from a dead uncle, are you going to get into this or what?"
I'm not just an atheist, but I reject spiritualism and mysticism of every kind. Sure, I now that the second greatest medicine of all time for every disease and all people is "placebo." So, to the degree that people believe, have faith in a certain pill or a given deity, their lives can be better. And in the words of Pope Francis, "Who am I to judge?" But, being a personal purist about these things, my faithlessness was almost shattered only hours ago.
Uncle Sam and I have some things in common. You will have to excuse my being a bit opaque, as I just don't want to get into too much detail. Let's put it this way for those who have been reading this long, forty years after his death, I may think about him as much as anyone else alive, and that's no too frequently. He was in his late thirties when I was born, and he and Aunt Lena had no children. (I wrote about her here when she died recently at 109)
I was the second child, and Aunt Lena and Uncle Sam begged my Mother to let them raise my vibrant pretty three year older sister, as Sam was a professional engineer with a relatively high paying job. This caused my Mother great distress, and even thinking about it made her cry. This offer didn't go far, but they spent much time with our family. We only lived forty miles away and we visited most weekends, especially since my Grandmother lived with them.
Sam was never comfortable with me, or my father, and didn't have any friends outside of his immediate family that I ever knew of. He gave me my first wrist watch when I was eight, and once he took me to a professional wrestling match in Baltimore, where they lived. It was the real smoke filled thing, with people shouting for the good guys like "Gorgeous George." and yelling at the evil ones. This event was just for us guys, and my sister wasn't invited. He tried at times, but was always distant, even berating me when I decided to go to a local college that cost a trivial amount in those days, saying my parents were too poor and I should go to work.
I left college pretty soon and moved to New York City, and I had "problems." Once he and Aunt Lena visited me, and Uncle Sam for the first time spoke to me in a different way. He confided that when he was a young man about my age he too had serious difficulties, and that he was sent to what was called then an alienist for help. For the first time we spoke likefriends, he wasn't mocking my speech defects or doing everything to distance us, but was expressing empathy for problems that although neither of us ever articulated, we felt we shared.
I was not to see him too often afterwards, and when we were together at my father's funeral he said, "It won't be long for me." And he was right, declining quickly in mind and body, and dying when he was probably about my age now--which gets us to his "visit" today.
I had an unusual tennis day, arriving at the courts without a tennis racket, which is a serious mistake even for someone with memory problems. But two people offered loans, and this is a special group as I've developed actual friendships. They know me, and what I am, who I am, and many of us have mutual affection, which is really rather rare, and boy did I need it today. And even I got the greatest compliment ever. I was talking about the complexity of attempting to correct some rather serious vulnerabilities at the zoo without being offensive, and when I said it's complex, MB said, in good fun, "let's get ready for a lecture. " Well I condensed it, expressed in a few key sentences, and then said, "I'm done, and that didn't take too long did it?" And he smiled at me and said, "Yeah, it was the Cliff Notes of Zoo Administration." Wow, what a compliment! There may be hope for me yet.
Now, to Sam's visit, and my writing about him. Which is a good thing in itself, as I doubt if it's been done before. My wife wanted to plant some tomatoes this season, and suggested a raised bed. I checked it out, and when she told me it was only few plants, I looked outside the window at last years, and we agreed those plastic pots would do the job, but I had to cut out the bottom so the roots could grow deeper. I am not an orderly person, and I'm sure someday there will a discovery of the the genetic allele that controls this, so I can say, "it ain't my fault." But I knew that I had a pair of metal clippers that would allow me to cut out the bottom of the two containers. I went to the garage and I happened to know exactly where they were, and I got them and cut out the bottom. Voila, it was done, and I then took the container and put the dirt in the bed our dog had dug to hang out in the shade, that was getting scary deep. And we were done, and I was going to put the clippers back----but I couldn't find them.
I reminded my wife, "Those were Uncle Sam's clippers from when Aunt Lena was moving and getting rid of all his stuff." It was all I had of Sam's, the only physical reminder of him, and it was lost---really lost. I had only used in a small area to cut out the container, and it was a bright sunny day, so we started to look. I looked in the garage where it had been, I dug out the dirt from the dogs hole and sifted it, I walked the entire lawn, I dug out all the adjacent grass (including what turned out to be a plant that my wife had carefully nurtured) and then I did it again. An hour had passed, then a second; and now I was frantic. Either I had hid the damn thing and forgotten it, or something even more disturbing had happened.
This was a solid metal drop-forged clipper that does not just dematerialize-----yet having gone over every spot for now over two hours, both my wife-- who can find anything, and myself, I said to her there's only one solution, that I hid it and can't remember where. But there was another answer, one that I didn't tell her, since living with me is tough enough. But, now this option was encroaching on me. What if my own age at this day was the exact age of Sam when he passed away? And what if, in spite of my radical rejection of all things spiritual, that Sam does, in some form that I can't understand, exist. And that Sam was simply hiding, or taking this device from this earthly medium, just to say, "Hi Al, how are things." And he did it by making this evaporate, just so I would give his life a moment of thought. It was just for me to remember that even though he hurt me at times when I was a kid, he had suffered in his own life. And that although he had lived his life in anonymity, he did finally connect with his nephew. And he wanted to remind us of our night at the wrestling match and how much fun it was.
Uncle Sam, may you rest in Peace
Samuel Aronson-- Circa 1899-1974