My sister and I are not close. We exchange text messages a few times a year and rarely speak on the phone. We haven’t seen each other in person for over 10 years. We like it that way.
She has a son, my only nephew. I met him once when he was in diapers. A few years later we met again during a family vacation.
I’ve never seen him in person any other time.
He is now 14.
After my wife died and I was doing the big purge of our stuff, I gave my nephew a laptop. For a few weeks, he emailed me little notes about his life. I suspect his mother encouraged him to do this as a way of thanking me (and because I was a grieving mess at the time).
It was sweet. His emails were a bright spot for me during a dark time. After a while, these emails petered out and then stopped entirely.
I wasn’t surprised. We never had a relationship. He was a kid and I was a stranger to him.
I had a cool uncle – my father’s brother. He was a 70’s hippie with long hair and a big droopy mustache. He took me fishing at dawn when we were on vacation. He made grape jelly by smashing grapes with his bare feet. He once visited us in Tamaqua and gave us petrified poop, fossils and a fox pelt from the museum where he worked. He made a working parachute for my GI Joe guy out of a silk handkerchief. He ince lived on a sailboat.
I thought he was the coolest man alive.
I wanted to be an uncle like him.
After my wife died I thought maybe I could become a cool uncle to my nephew.
I’d drive my rig to Pittsburgh from out West. We’d do a road trop. We’d visit the Grand Canyon, the desert and the mountains. We’d shoot guns and camp in the wilderness.
I’d talk to him around the campfire about technology, women and life.
I would be that cool uncle he would remember when he grew up.
Yeah. Nope. That didn’t happen.
When I ended my road trip, the last thing I wanted to do was travel anywhere. All I wanted to do was get settled and be alone. It took me two years before I had gotten through the worst of my grieving. I wasn’t fit for company.
Then Covid hit. It gave me a convenient excuse not to travel.
But the truth is that I’ve built the life I want and it doesn’t include living out the fantasy of being a cool uncle. I’m not willing to do the work.
I send him a birthday card with a check once a year and reply to my sister when she texts me photos of his activities. Other than that, we have have no relationship whatsoever.
I don’t regret this. It is what it is.
My nephew doesn’t need me in his life. He has two families with whom he splits his time – his mother’s and his father’s (they are divorced).
Which is good because I’m not in his life.
As for me, I realized I liked the concept of being “the cool uncle”. It sounds good. It would be an ego boost to me. But the reality is that sending a birthday card once a year doesn’t cut it.
So I am calling it for what it is.
I’m never going to be the cool uncle.