Uncle Red

Stickball. Kick the can. The children's playground tiled with hexagonal red cement brick, and bordered by black wrought iron gates spiked at the top. I heard terrible stories of those spikes. Were they true? My Dad's brother, and a rooftop game gone horribly wrong?

A disused water fountain. Broken playground toys. Again it's winter. It's Cold.

My mother is sick again, off to another hospital another doctor another theory. Maybe it's 1962. I need to be somewhere so I am sent to spend the day around the corner with Uncle Red, Aunt Filomena (called Filly) and Cousin Robert.

These are big people all big people, although in honesty Aunt Filly was large because of the severe diabetic condition she had that also ran through my father's side of the family. Aunt Filly liked her coffee with cake and an extra insulin pill on the side---no sugar please. She'd laugh. A beautiful woman. A face like a Botticelli angel, at once mischievous and sweet. You had to love her. It's probably why I don't really like skinny girls.

Robert was big, too, taking after his father. He had, too, the same gentle kindness. I bet he grew into a great man.

But the biggest one of all, and the biggest man I ever knew, was Uncle Red. He was always just "Red".  I don't think I ever knew his real name. Perhaps no one ever did. Perhaps like my mother's middle name, a hated and hidden secret all her life, even to her death.

Red. The remaining shock of red hair and always, the red face.  And a cigar, perpetually half smoked and stubby yet never seemingly lit. Uncle Red. A jackhammer operator with massive George Forman sized upper arms and a Refrigerator Perry sized belly. (Go ahead, I'll wait while you google them if need be, I have no interest in updating my own references). I see two pictures of him whenever I think of Uncle Red: One, sitting kitty cornered on his favorite chair, a stool impossibly too small for his frame, in a kitchen, their kitchen I believe. He's wearing a wife beater. The other is outside on that cold winter day. Plaid wool Cap, red, with ear flaps down. Always the cigar.

In those days, I was always Anthony. While staying at Uncle Red's house, some need arose to go to the corner deli for some small provisions. I had spent the first part of this afternoon chiefly with their son Robert, kindly as I said, but big and rough and way beyond my years, less so in age and more by experience. So when Uncle Red told me he needed to go out for a short errand, and asked if I wanted to come, I was more than glad for the change.

We lived in a fiefdom of sorts,  divided by the great highway, over which ran the Windy Bridge. Almost everything you ever wanted or went to was on the other side of the bridge, with the sole exception being the bus to downtown which we picked up at the corner of our block on our side of the bridge.

So Uncle Red and I went off to the other side of the bridge, for the milk or bread or whatever it was. I can no longer remember if the playground was on our side or the other side of the bridge, but in any case we walked through it on this incredibly cold day. That's where it happened.

For some reason we were talking about my parents, perhaps Red looking to console my worries. Maybe I mentioned something about cars or driving or traffic. Uncle Red shared a story or two about my fathers driving ability, which apparently he greatly admired. He said my dad was the best driver he ever knew, for reasons unknown and unremembered to me now, and impressed on me to pay careful attention and learn from him when I one day became a driver myself.

Knowing nothing about my fathers own mysterious life, the conversation deeply impressed me. But as we walked on this ice covered bitterly cold day, I remember shivering or doing something to indicate how cold I was. I remember not having gloves, probably because I didn't think I would be going out on such a day. Uncle Red, standing on my left, noticed that I was cold and with no gloves. With the tenderness of a grizzly bear trying to hold the delicate wings of a butterfly and do it no harm, Uncle Red gently scooped up my hand and thrust it, enclosed within his big fist, into his deep, and cavernous pocket.

A good friend once told me only a few years ago of his first experience with heroin, before it all went horribly wrong. He described it as a blanket of warmth and safety wrapping him up inside, a feeling which he had never had and which he seemed to feel was that "something" he had always missed.

That day, my hand safely held within Uncle Red's pocket, I experienced the safest feeling I had ever known. I have never found it’s equal  since. Thank you Uncle Red.