Uncle Ira

I thought he was Santa Claus. I really did. I’m not sure exactly why I thought that. He didn’t wear a red suit, but an old pair of baggy black pants, a white shirt, and a dark green sweater. He didn’t have a beard, but he did have a little bit of white hair. Perhaps it was the pipe that was always alight, with smoke swirling above his head, just like the “smoke that encircled his head like a wreath” in the famous poem. And the smoke smelled so good—cherry wood pipe tobacco. To this day, I love the smell, even if tobacco does kill people!

Mostly, though, it was his lap, always open and ready for a little girl like me to climb up and settle myself. He must have talked to me some, but I don’t remember that part. I just remember being held in that big, comfy, soft body. No one else did that. My dad hardly ever touched me. I can remember one time, before I was two, that he held me up so that I could look out the window into the soft twilight of a summer’s night, memorable because he had brought home ice cream for us to eat. My grandpa, who occasionally was on the same property as my uncle, was never allowed in the house when we were around. I only remember him as a shadowy figure who had a very neat cot in the garage.

For all those reasons—the Santa effect, the cherry smoke, the big lap–that interacted with each other, I loved Uncle Ira, who wasn’t really my uncle; he was my great uncle, my mother’s maternal uncle. And he lived with my grandma in her shotgun style house. When my mother, my older sister, and I went to visit, I would dash through the front room, which was the bedroom, into the middle room, which was the living room where Uncle Ira was always ensconced in an easy chair that sat right next to an east-facing window that let in all kinds of sunlight. He was always in that chair, except at mealtimes or at night.

Grandma’s house didn’t have a proper bathroom, just a little stall for a toilet. The only sink was the kitchen one, so grooming had to happen there. That’s where we could watch Uncle Ira shave. He’d sharpen his straight razor on his strop, lather up his face, and tilt it this way and that to get all the stray whiskers from his face and neck. He didn’t seem to mind the fact that two little girls stood gawking at him as he performed his daily “toilet.”

I presume he paid attention to my sister as well as to me, but, I think perhaps because I was the youngest child in the family, I had the privilege of sitting in that lap, patting his face, playing with his pipe and sweater buttons, and chattering nonsense. Perhaps, too, that familiarity was welcomed by him, a lonely, retired elevator operator who had no home except his sister’s. Whatever the case, I was the one who received two gifts from him. One, his two-sided shaving mirror, I kept till it broke; the other, an extremely small Christmas decoration I have to this day. Measuring about two inches bytwo inches, it is made with a small circle of pine wood, bark still on, with an even smaller pine twig lying on its side as a bench on which is a tiny snow figure made of a pipe cleaner. To make the scene complete, a very small flocked Christmas tree sits beside the twig bench.

I’m sure the little ornament was something he picked up in a five and dime, but it was—and is—the most special of all my Christmas decorations. It’s the last tie I have to an uncle who showed his love to me, not just by the gift, but by the welcoming arms and lap.