My grandmother’s favorite brother was my Great-uncle Tom. They were very close in age and, living on the isolated range in Nevada, had probably made the siblings emotionally closer, as well. They saw friends and relatives from other ranches occasionally, but usually the seven children only had each other for playmates and confidantes. Grandma said that later, after they moved to Monterey County, Tom grew up to be a wild one. It was clear, however, that she still loved him very much.
My mother was fond of Uncle Tom also. She told me that once he was visiting when she had a terrible earache. He lit his pipe and blew the warm smoke into her ear. She said it was like magic how the pain just slipped silently away, along with the puffs of smoke.
I was four years old and I did not like Uncle Tom who had come for a visit. First of all, he had terrible fits of coughing that sounded like there was somehow liquid bubbling up and down within the cough. He could hardly get a sentence out without coughing. Grandma wanted him to tell the stories he remembered from their childhood. I loved her stories so I thought maybe I’d love his too. My father was going to tape them so we could listen to them again and again.
Daddy pushed the record button and Uncle Tom said a sentence or two before the raspy, bubbling cough caught up with him. He coughed and coughed. He began again and only got through one sentence before the cough halted his narrative. Every few words he had to stop. He was not in control, the cough was. Uncle Tom could only speak when it allowed him to and that was seldom enough that the words made no sense. After Uncle Tom went home to Fresno, Daddy played the tape for us, but it was no use. The cough had taken over—he may have had wonderful stories, but he was unable to pass them on to us.
But here is the real reason I didn’t like Uncle Tom. I was born during the war and times were hard. I had almost no toys. I never had a teddy bear and I didn’t have a doll, until the neighbors said it was a shame that this little girl didn’t have a doll and bought me one.
For my 4th birthday, my father had built me a swing. It was a wonderful swing, a gigantic swing and my older brother and I spent a lot of time swinging. It was built out of lumber in the shape of an inverted U and had long skids on the sides to hold it upright. Uncle Tom teased me about the swing. “When I leave here, I’m just going to put it over my shoulders and walk away with it. Guess you’ll have to do without it, ‘cause I’m taking it with me.”
I was terrified. On one level, I knew that the swing was so much taller than Uncle Tom that he could not possibly put it over his shoulders and walk away with it. But he was a grown-up and grown-ups had power that children could not comprehend. Maybe he could do it. And it was my swing, my beautiful swing, the first wonderful thing I had ever been given that was solely mine. And Uncle Tom just might be going to take it away.
Uncle Tom died a few months later. My mother, my grandmother and I drove down to Fresno for the funeral. They sat in front, talking and crying a little now and then. I stood on the back seat and watched my skirt puffing out as the wind came in the open windows.
