So Cal Story - Confessions pt.1 (11/20/05)

(Written 11/20/05)

My workday started today with a phone call from my sister Kari, which is not unusual. Kari has the commute from HELL and frequently she'll call me at work and talk to me while she is driving. The first half-hour of my day I take care of our company's literature requests and then I go up to the front desk, turn the phones on, and play receptionist for 45 minutes until the real receptionist shows up. Some days I get more work done while I am up there, some days I play as many games of solitaire as I can and other days I talk to Kari. Frequently the first thing Kari will say is "I talked to Dad" which is something else that is not uncommon these days. I can't recall if I wrote about this in a previous story, but my dad was recently diagnosed with cancer (if I didn't write about it before I am sure I will soon) so Kari will call and give me updates on his health, treatments or his mood as she talks to him more regularly than I. She is also in the process of buying a new house so we have been talking a lot about that as well so I figured today was going to be a "dad day" - he has been experiencing a lot of pain recently so I thought it would be an update. Instead, she filled me in on the condition of my dad's brother, my uncle who just so happens to be one of the most complicated relationships I have ever had.

Now some of you probably already know what I am about to talk about through prior conversations, but he is not someone I mention often. One of my first memories as a child is of him. I don't know if I actually remember the incident or if I have just created the image in my mind based on hearing the story so often as a child, but it goes something like this. My uncle, both of my sisters & I are sitting in a restaurant in San Francisco. I am young, like maybe two which would make my middle sister three and my oldest sister six. My uncle, my sister Gina and I are all smoking cigarettes while my older sister Kari is hiding under the table. I doubt that Gina & I are REALLY smoking, but we are holding lit cigarettes none-the-less. You see, not only was my uncle a raging alcoholic, but he also was on the eccentric side. He liked to do things that made him seem unique or funny, and I guess in his mind in the late sixties it was funny to have children sitting at his table smoking in a restaurant, and maybe back then it was. He was also very creative and had created nicknames for all of us. One of my sisters was "Susannah" and I was "Pierre the neighbor boy" although I can't for the life of me remember why. Whenever we would all get together (my sisters, uncle, cousins & I) we all had different names and when we were out in public we all addressed each other by those names. Maybe it was his way of creating an alternate universe for us kids where I wasn't Donn, the sissy mama's boy that none of the grown-ups but my mom liked and Kari wasn't the put-upon oldest child that was being held responsible for raising her younger brother and sister because her mom was an alcoholic and wouldn't do it herself. Maybe it was his way of letting us drop that stuff and just be kids - only he knows. I wonder if he & I were still speaking today if he would still refer to me as "Pierre".

As I got older my uncle became even more important to me. My mom married a man that basically hated my sisters & I and both of them were alcoholics. My real dad wasn’t the warm and fuzzy type so the only one of the bunch that brought me any type of joy was my uncle. He lived in Redding for part of my youth and our summers were always the best (or so it seemed at the time). He would take us three kids to the lake and rent a boat to go fishing. He'd drink all day letting us drive the boat and I honestly think that we covered every inch of Whiskeytown Lake. One of the games we'd play was called "man over board" and basically what would happen is out of the blue he'd scream "man over board!" and we kids would spring into action. Whoever was driving would kill the engine, one of us would throw the anchor over the side and the other of us would dive into the water to "rescue" whoever it was that had fallen in. I know it sounds corny, but as kids it was fun. As I look back now I wonder if maybe he was preparing us just in case he got too drunk and fell in - that way we could save him. Again, only he knows.

By the time I was a teenager my uncle had moved to Sacramento and I looked forward to seeing him whenever I could. On many nights he would show up at our door in Redding at 3:00 in the morning and I'd wake-up to him tapping on my window. He'd be drunk and my mom would pack my suitcase and put me into the car with him to drive to Weaverville where my grandparents lived. It was a little town in Trinity County about 45 miles over a mountain from Redding. He drove a stick-shift Chevy Luv pick-up and basically he'd sit in the drivers seat pushing the gas and brake pedals and I'd sit next to him steering and shifting gears - by the time I was 13 I was driving his truck all over the back roads of Weaverville. The trips were never that scary too me, although one time I did fall asleep and swerved off the road, but I think he was asleep too because he didn't notice until we actually hit the gravel. I still to this day can't imagine what my mother was thinking as she stood there in the doorway in her nightgown waving good-bye to us - her young son and his drunk uncle - but then again, she was probably drunk too when she went to bed so maybe she didn't even remember it until the next morning when she woke up.

When I was about 11 or 12 my mom and step-dad bought a new camera, a really nice one at the time. I was immediately interested in it and as luck would have it, I took really good pictures. I became the photographer and would have to be the one that took pictures at the family events. When my uncle found out I was interested in photography he called me up and invited me to Sacramento for a photo workshop. He had bought a new camera and decided that he was going to see for himself if I was any good so he went out and bought like 10 rolls of film. When I got there we spent 2 days driving all over Sacramento taking pictures of things. We even tried to do fancy things like "soft-focus" by rubbing Vaseline on his sliding glass door and taking pictures of the fountain outside. After I left he took the film in for processing and about a month later a package arrived at my house. Inside was this huge stack of pictures in order of how I took them. All through the stack there were notes with suggestions about composition or lighting, or praise about a photo that had turned out particularly good. That was just how he was - he was the only adult that ever encouraged me as a child to explore, to see things in a different way, to believe in myself and my talents, and he was the only one to take an interest in what I was interested in. I loved him because he let me be myself and loved me because I was me.

Unfortunately, there was another side to the story.

To be continued...