February 8, 2001
Love and Gratitude
My uncle died two weeks ago, very
unexpectedly. He was only 60, which seems very young to me, especially when I consider
that my parents are just a few years younger than he was. This uncle, my father’s
brother, features prominently in some of my earliest memories. His name was John Edwin,
but my father called him Bubby, so I always did too.
I remember going with my parents to visit
Bubby and his wife, Faye, in Elberton, Georgia, when I was only 2 or 3 years old. My
memories that far back are nothing more than brief bursts of image and sound, mostly very
inaccurate, I’m sure. But I remember my parents listening to records with my uncle
and aunt in the evenings. I remember James Taylor, and early solo Paul Simon. From around
the same time, I remember my father playing the guitar and singing.
 My aunt and uncle were
both English teachers, and they gave me some of my first books. My copy of Dr. Seuss’s ABC is inscribed, To Susannah from John and Faye.
When I was 8, in the summer of 1977, I
went to visit my family in Georgia during the summer. My parents and nine-month-old Dixie
and I were living in Germany (my father was stationed there with the Air Force). I went
home for a month or so and spent some of the time staying at my uncle and aunt’s
house. They had thousands of books and spent a lot of time reading and writing. I loved to
read and write, too. They also had a cat with kittens, so I was in heaven. I had never
been around cats much before, and I absolutely loved them.
 That summer Bubby taught me to play chess. He and Faye took me to see Star Wars at the movies. We rode around town in
their little car (am I dreaming if I say it was a VW Beetle?) and I sang silly songs for
them (like Seņor Don Gato). Cat
Stevens’ album Izitso was new that year,
and Bubby and I loved the song “I never wanted to be a star.” He’d start to
sing the first line (I was seventeen, you were
working for…) and wait for me to take the falsetto part (Matthew and Son!). The last time I saw him, in
November 1998, he still remembered that, and sang his line so I could sing mine.
Bubby and Faye never had children, but
they both taught school and spent a lot of time around young people. Looking back, I
realize how much it meant to have adults in my life who really cared about who I was and
what I was interested in. When I was 8 years
old, and there was a new baby sister to get used to, that really meant a lot to me. I didn’t
spend a lot of time with Bubby and Faye over the years, since my family lived overseas so
much. But I think people who like you for who you are make such a difference in your
development as a person, no matter how infrequently you see them.
Writing all these things down, I’ve
been struck by how who I am has largely stayed the same since I was a child. I love cats,
movies, and games. I am so glad music was a part of my life from the very beginning. I am
grateful to Bubby and Faye and my parents for teaching me to love books and reading. When
I look at the path I took – my degrees in English, the years I spent teaching writing
– I know that I learned from my family that you can read, write, and think for a
living.
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