Being an Uncle ~

I am the uncle of eight nieces and nephews that I know about. All but one of them are adults now, the other one is a teenager.

As my nieces and nephews were growing up I didn't get to see them very often. My family is scattered across the United States and now even across the planet. But when I was younger my nieces and nephews lived in different states most of the time. The youngest one has lived in my state for a number of years but lives about two hours away from me.

So as an uncle I haven't really gotten to know my nieces and nephews. Busy with my career and raising my own children I didn't get to spend hardly any time with nieces and nephews. When we would go and visit their parents the visit usually focused on adults with adults and our children with their children. And because we lived so far away that did not happen very often.

My wife has kept up with them pretty well but same as me has not seen them very often. But I'm not talking about her right now.

As an uncle I feel like my role has been maligned by entertainment media. The weird uncle, the crazy uncle the drunkard dope smoking uncle that is in and out of jail. The uncle that stays hidden and nobody knows because nobody really wants to be around them. That's what an uncle is as far as I have seen presented in the media.

When I was growing up we moved out into the woods and lived in a house that my parents had built when my father retired from the military. The house was on property next to my grandparents property. But because of the relationship and life in general I did not get to see my grandparents very often. Usually just on holidays and the occasional special occasion. But not very often.

My father had lots of uncles. He had about seven uncles and one aunt. And that was just on his father's side of the family on his mother's side of the family he had to uncles that I know about. One of those uncles lived just up the road from where our house was and we rode by his family's house daily whenever I would go to school or whenever we would go into town.

I didn't really get to see my great uncles. We would ride by their house and look and see what might have changed but other than that didn't really stop. They were different and strange and in and out of trouble. The uncle was fine but his children were not.

And so I grew up seeing my dad drive by his uncles house daily and never knew him to stop and say hello or hang out or whatever. We would make the occasional trip into town to visit one of the other uncles. But it just wasn't a regular part of our time there.

Now that most of my nieces and nephews are adults we've made some efforts to go and see them. We traveled out to the middle of the country to visit two nieces and that was a very pleasant experience. We reached out to others but have gotten very little response. On a recent trip to Israel we made it clear what were doing and or niece that is living in Israel made the effort to come and see us while we were there which was awesome! Her and her husband are living in Israel for a couple of years and it was great to see them over there.

My youngest nephew is one that I have not seen very often. At some point I realized that I had seen him fewer times than the number of years he had been alive and that made me sad. I racked my brain trying to figure out a way that I could let him get to know me and my family a little bit more than the occasional holiday or special event time together where his face was glued to a screen of some kind. And I came up with an idea that I continue to this day.

I started sending on postcards. I would share a painting that my wife had done, I would share a picture of my wife and I at something we were doing. When we go on trips I try to send him a postcard of what we are seeing or doing. I use an app called TouchNote to send the postcards so that they are very personal and not store-bought and very easy to do: going from place to place.

I enjoy sending the postcards to him so much that I started sending postcards to some of the others. Not all the time, not very often, but just enough to let them know that they have an aunt and uncle that care for them that doesn't get to see them very often and that we are thinking about them.

I hope that my efforts have some sort of impact. Not necessarily with me but just with them reaching out to those that they care for and letting them know that they care. Pass it on and all.

You can learn more about the TouchNote app at https://touchnote.onelink.me/F720/7iapvmdf

Four pieces of ice ~

My father retired from the Air Force when I was 12 years old. Seventh grade was a tough time to change schools, but because we had moved a few times I knew how to do it because I had already done it a couple of times in my few years at school. We moved from Patrick Air Force Base on the East Coast of Florida to Central Florida near Ocala.


It was good! My brother and I had a room together, my grandmother had her own bedroom, and then my parents were on the other end of the house in the master bedroom suite.

Summers in Florida are hot! And we had moved into a brand-new house that my parents had built. Central air conditioning was awesome! And the refrigerator had something that we had never had before, an icemaker!

My brother and I love making sweet tea and putting gobs of ice in our glasses and pouring the tea over the ice while it was still hot so that when we drink it the ice was almost melted and the tea was cold. Of course this took a lot of ice and so for the first few months or so as things warmed up in the spring and early summer we used a lot of ice to the point that when my mom and dad got home from work there would be no ice in the ice maker tray for them to use.

After a few weeks of grumbling about no ice and maybe the ice machine was too slow my Mom caught on to what we were doing when we would make tea. She then made a rule that we could not have any more than four pieces of ice in our cup at a time.

My brother and I were devastated! Now our plan when we made tea didn't work and we had to come up with something different. So we would make the tea and then let it all cool then put it in the refrigerator and make sure that it was cold before we drink it. Which is what we should've been doing in the first place, but because we had the new icemaker we thought that we could just use the ice.

When the icemaker broke we had to switch back to ice trays which is a pain in and of itself. That led to arguments over somebody not filling the ice trays and me and my brother coming up with more efficient ways to fill the ice trays after we emptied the (he was always better that than me).

But to this day when I go to get ice I feel a twinge of something when I take more than four pieces of ice, whether it's by hand, from a tray, or from a dispenser in the door

The memories of childhood...

Forest meme ~

I saw a meme where a Turkish man had spent the last 30 years using his personal income to buy and plant over 11,000 trees in a valley in the desert and Turkey. And how great that was that he did that.

I thought about it for a few minutes and then I wondered why no one was complaining about the environment that he ruined. People look at deserts and think they are lifeless but they're not. Life is different in the desert. Water is scarce, animals are different colors to blend in with the sand and rocks. If there are wild plants they are scraggly and usually small because of the lack of water and continued sunshine every day beating on them.

I find it fascinating that people automatically use their filters for what they believe is "better" to judge the actions of somebody like this man and say that what he did was good.

It's kind of like the whole effort to go to Mars and colonize another planet. I love Star Trek and I love the idea of space travel and exploring the galaxy and even the universe, but right now Mars is a "pristine" environment littered with many failed robots that are trash on the surface of the planet. There are a few that are still active and are leaving tracks in the sand of a pristine planet. And we have a growing constellation of satellites that are orbiting this other planet that is untouched by human hands except through robots.

While I understand people looking at what we're doing here in our own backyard I don't understand why nobody is crying out to save Mars.

At least that's the logic that I keep seeing. And it's the logic that the majority of people accept as right and true. I tend to question those things and wonder what were missing when we just accept things.