“Do you not like Uncle Roger?” My youngest says, head cocked, her expression razor serious.
How to answer that? When I was growing up in Maryland and Alaska I was just a normal happy kid really no different from all the other kids I knew at the time. But just before junior high school my parents sent me to boarding school in Ireland with my brother, to keep me from ending up in the same trouble as him. I was thrust into an alien environment and singled out for the one thing that made me normal back home: I was American.
When I came home to the States seven years later I felt disconnected and had a hard time relating to anyone, and I hated that. I put on the brave face just as I’d done at boarding school, all the while believing in the notion that if I smiled then the world would smile with me and eventually people would believe that all was right in the world of Richard P. Nixon and then maybe it would be and I’d be normal again.
I had changed and I hated that, too.
What caused the change? The bullying? The war? Being so alone far from home? All the traveling? For so long I felt like the biggest wuss for not knowing and getting over whatever it was and I couldn’t tell anyone for fear they wouldn’t understand and think I was just weird. Wanda understood, though, the moment when we were making out in my parents’ living room while they were away in Europe and I suddenly pulled her from the couch to the floor and shielded her from the machine gun fire that some disc jockey played on the radio.
“Of course I like your Uncle Roger,” I say. “I just wish…” my voice trails off and I bite my lip and smile as I suddenly remember what Dad used to say about wishes and horses and beggars riding. “It’s a long story.”
