a little reflection...

A little over a week ago, my mother’s twin brother passed away. I always thought I was what most would consider “a family guy”. My wife and I didn’t move out of state because we wanted to be close to family. As it turns out, I couldn’t really tell you a whole lot about my uncle. I know he was like a “second father” to my cousin (and my grandfather was my cousin’s “first father”, being that his biological dad hasn’t had much to do with him since about age 5).

Other than that, I didn’t really know a lot about my uncle. Here’s what I do know: He served two tours in Vietnam. He had two sons who turned out okay and now live on the other side of the continent. He and his wife were separated but never divorced. He was a good guy (although a bit lazy) and he’d help just about anyone who needed it. He used to ride his bike on a 150 mile Multiple Sclerosis bike-a-thon until his knees started to give out on him.

I didn’t know him much more than that. I’m not saying that I should have known his favorite color, ice cream, or meal, but I could have talked to him and learned a little more about him as a person and not think of him as just my uncle. I guess I’m worried that people go through my life knowing me but not knowing me.

I guess that’s how life just is though. People float in and they float out. I can think of plenty of people I was (or that I thought I was) friends with in high school. These days, I talk to only about three of them on a regular basis and I only graduated with one of those three. Friends of old have faded into the background.

I don’t know what I’m looking for, but the death of my uncle has taught me to attempt to get to know people better. It’s not been two weeks yet, but hopefully I can keep up with trying to get to know people a little better for more than another two weeks.

the beginning of my experiment

Okay, so I basically know that this isn’t going to be all that good, but it’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a little while, so I’m going to give it a shot. I wanted to start this before my daughter was born, but she’s now 20 weeks old and I’m only starting today.

So what is it that I’m doing anyway? Rambling, more than likely. There isn’t going to be any cutting edge stuff here. It may be a little reminiscing, and it will likely be a lot of opinionated garbage, but I’m hoping for it to be a little bit of a release for me. I’ve never been a “literary guy”. My vocabulary skills are lacking and my SAT verbal score of 430 surely displays my lack of such skills. However, I have always enjoyed reading. News, fiction, non-fiction; I enjoy it all. Whether I can WRITE is left to be seen.

So, here commences an experiment. What I want to get from this (besides a place to release some creativity) is I want to let my daughter know that Daddy can do more than push paper at his corporate job. Maybe, someday, when I’m old and gray, she’ll be able to say, “My Dad wrote all this.” Maybe not.

I'm the reason my Daddy is writing this blog