Kinship

This summer, I went on a road trip with my two sisters to visit our Uncle Roger.

Ten years had passed since I had been in touch and even longer since our family made the trip to Council Bluffs for our cousin Claire’s wedding.  Now that Mom and Dad were gone, Roger’s wife JoAnn too—He was my only living uncle, the last of a generation. I had exchanged the usual family correspondence–Christmas cards and wedding invitations, notices of births and graduations with promises to call. 

His daughters assured me, he would enjoy a call, “He’ll have lots of stories.”

Our first conversation lasted two hours, and probably would have continued had his battery on the portable phone held out.  He shared his day; the perils of taking a shower, how he drinks pomegranate juice rather than whiskey, and joked that the only food he eats now comes out of a box.  It was as if I was talking to Dad or Grandpa, who shared the same staccato cadence to emphasize a point. “You. Would. Not. Believe. It.”  And turns of phrase like “I laughed my guts out! “or “Holy Smokes!” I heard the same quavery pause in Roger’s voice they used when talking about difficulties—especially health problems.

Our phone calls became regular, and I asked if he would be up for a visit from me and my sisters.  He agreed that would be okay, but he had lost his hosting capabilities, did not go out to restaurants, and no one had been inside the house since Covid, except family. We agreed to make things simple, bring take-out food, and stay overnight in a hotel.

When his daughters heard we were coming, they vacuumed and dusted, cut the grass, trimmed the hedges, his beard and hair. 

The trip was delayed a time or two, once due to my sister’s surprise positive Covid test, and then a knee injury that required a shot of cortisone.  Wendy drove, taking her place as eldest, I sat shotgun and Shari, the youngest rode in the backseat (as always).

We packed Wendy’s Subaru with a cooler filled with iced tea and cherries, a couple of bottles of wine, bags of chips and chocolate for the 6-hour trip. I threw in a box of old photos I had grabbed from dismantled albums, some still backed with thick black paper and traces of white ink. Shari held up photos of Christmas Eve’s gift opening extravagance in Grandma and Grandpa’s living room, another of us sitting on a rock wall at Minnehaha Falls in kerchiefs and sweatshirts, and at Easter in pastel coats, hats, and white gloves. Our memories ricocheted around the car with “I remember…” or “I wonder…”

Before we knew it, we were on the Iowa border and heading west on I-80.

I brought a DNA test kit along just in case the subject of family genealogy came up. I was doubtful he would agree to a test, knowing his aversion to anything medical, and his natural skepticism of technology—plus doing such a test might turn up an unwelcome surprise.  I was thinking of my own need, to fill in the empty space on the family tree on his mother’s side, to identity her biological father. 

Phil and I have an interest in genealogy and over the last five years have spent considerable time building out our family trees.  We are many generations back, meeting our relations through baptismal records deciphered from Danish and Swedish cursive. The birth dates and death dates tell a story of bitter hardship and loss–of multiple children to illness, wives in childbirth, their land and livelihoods. We have produced quite a schematic diagram of our ancestral connections thanks to Ancestry.com. Each person’s profile holds name, birth, and death dates, which is linked to parents, siblings, and offspring. Both Phil and I have done DNA testing and shared it with potential “kin.” Occasionally, we will get an email from a distant cousin who share our DNA that brings to life a branch of the family.  I heard from one such cousin, Françoise in Belgium who I exchanged emails, photos, letters of our shared family. Recording the “who what where” can be as dry as dust unless there are stories to liven things up.  And the stories we tell and hear make sense of what we otherwise wouldn’t know that our relatives once worked in the lumber camps near where we own land. It made me realize how I was missing out on a relationship with my own living history.

Would he recognize the gray-haired women before him?

My sisters and I walked up the driveway with take-out from Pizza King to find our uncle in sweatpants and t-shirt, settled in his recliner.  The first thing he said was “I figured you would be here in an hour or so, after you said 20 minutes.” His wit still intact. 

For us, Roger had always been our “kid” uncle, born seven years after Dad, (who became a young father at 19), and now at 81, still didn’t seem that old. We found him much the same as he always was—lanky, ginger-haired, freckle-faced. Even with multiple health challenges, and a stroke that caused some neuropathy on his left side, he manages on his own at home.  His daughters see to it that he gets to medical appointments, groceries delivered to his front door and his mail carrier checks on him daily.

We drew his heavy living room chairs closer to his recliner, balancing paper plates of sausage, green olive and pineapple pizza. For the next six hours he told story after story—summer days at the pickle factory, pheasant hunting with his dogs, every make, model and color of each car he owned, the high jinks and misadventures on Medicine Lake–rolling car tires to make tracks on the lake to signal the ice was thick enough to drive on.  We shared memories of family gatherings—fish fries and corn roasts, weekends at Bear Paw Lodge, skating on Medicine Lake, getting slobbered by Poncho the huge brown Chesapeake Bay Retriever. 

He is still a night owl, but we hardly made it until 12:30 am.

Being with Uncle Roger allowed me to touch family again. I had been focused on the loss of my parents and now claim the role of elder on the family tree. Never again did I think I would be in the company of my elders. I was Debbie in ponytail and short set watching from the kitchen stool as Grandma mixed potato salad.  I could hear her voice as she named the flowers, in her rock garden as she pulled a weed, or pinched the top off a leggy begonia.  I could feel Grandpa’s warm palm as I fished out nickels and dimes for penny candy. And could see Dad and Roger in crew cuts and Bermuda shorts tinkering under the hood of a car. He brought me through the back door of Grandma and Grandpa’s house to again sniff that unique aroma of damp basement, mothballs, old wood, imbued with the friendly scent of vinegar, the Bertrand family brine. 

We came the next morning before heading back to Minneapolis.

Wendy said, “Okay, we have to be on the road by 12:30, no later.” After more pizza and stories, we took photos and exchanged hugs. Roger sent us off with thanks for coming and pointed out a shortcut to get us to 169, a route he knew well would get us home. We finally were in the car about 2:00, and agreed it was so good to see him. And that we need to do more sister trips like this one. Connecting with Uncle Roger was a gift I didn’t expect. Yes, there are things I want to know, but this wasn’t an interview to satisfy my own fact-checking needs.  I want to know him now as well as the “funcle” of my youth, knowing that we share DNA no matter if he spits in a tube.  We are kin, with an amalgam of genes that connect us to each other and makes us who we are.