Up A Storm

Talking with my mother across the fire Uncle Sid was always looking for a punchline like survival, you could see him searching for it – cue slapstick music – the particular package of words, and he always found them, his timing impeccable, we’d all howl.

Uncle Sid knew the value of brevity.

I don’t know when it started but he spoke in four-word sentences exclusively and all those summer nights by the fire he drank maybe three bottles of beer to my one Fresca – the next day my mother would holler where’s all my Fresca? – but he never broke form.

Me and my cousin Marty tied our flashlights to the branches overhead and beneath their intersecting white bubbles we gathered feathers and threads and ancient tinsel into flies for the morning salmon, and we listened to Uncle Sid he talked up a storm in the littlest gusts, he told us everything we needed to know I mean people don’t explain love do they but when Aunty Myrtle stuck her head out the cottage door her neck stretched she squawked aren’t you had enough yet Sid? he smiled and waved as if she’d said you’re looking mighty fine out there cooking up your word strands and all he said as he stood up and polished off his last beer was love is good sportsmanship.

They were both crazy my mother and Uncle Sid.

Such a common thing to say isn't it that people are crazy. Along with a twirl to the temple and a funny face, humour and warmth are implied, so of course it comes across lightly when I say it about them, but wait, do you feel me now plunk it at your feet heavy dark and cumbersome.

I said plunk so at least some levity would remain.

So. They were both crazy my mother and Uncle Sid but they loved us kids perfectly I’d say, enormously in fact, they encouraged us, Marty and me, to be sui generis and we didn't know what that meant but I guess it worked out I mean Marty’s a sheep farmer in Ireland, I’m going to see him next month, and I’m a comedian – it's all timing and brevity you see – I have a few nights in Belfast in July before I see him, he said he’d hop on a bus and come, that normalcy is not a requirement in Belfast pubs.

My mother did most of the talking those nights, Uncle Sid threw in words like seasoning, they told us stories about growing up in the small mill town of Terrace Bay, population four they joked, the little shack they lived in I’d seen in pictures and it was like Jenny’s from Forrest Gump I mean the Radley Place a palace in comparison.

Their stories were light and funny, plunked at our feet around the fire.