Uncle!
Ear to the phone, I hear my niece's voice for the first time in how many years? I'm chewing on a tiny ear of baby corn, probably slathered in MSG, and her voice sounds tired. It's a distant kind of tired, as if broadcast light years ago from an unknown galaxy. Of course she wants to see me, she says. She's a kind, non-vindictive person. She works really hard at not judging, although cross her on Tuesday, by Wednesday you'll be eviscerated on Facebook. Whatever happened before between her mother and her uncle has little to do with her.
Where do you want to meet?I ask.
She describes a place, not too far away, a peaceful spot by a tiny, shifting tributary of the Connecticut River. She describes it as her special place. It's always been imbued with the sacred, the place where she scattered her father's ashes into the quick-running waters.