I am in a small Georgia town on a normal February night. I have only 8 hours left of an 18 hour drive, my uncle has already insisted that I let him drive some of tomorrows journey. I will never give up the resistance!
The spotty wi-fi in this hotel allows me to talk with my pseudo boyfriend in one screen and watch my hero, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. narrate a genealogy show in another. While he talks to Kristi Yamaguchi about interment camps I think about my grandfather’s uncle Frank who worked in an internment camp in the 1940’s. I wonder how my grandfather felt about it as a teenager when his uncle went to go work in California. I wonder how he felt about it as a soldier himself in 1948 in Korea. As he lies in a hospice facility, does he still know this part of his family’s history? Is he thinking of all the non-catholic behavior demonstrated by some of our family’s lesser know tormented souls? Is his mother calling for him to come home, his father begging for forgiveness while I selfishly wish for him to wait for me? I am on my way to go see my grandfather, the be all end all, by default and I wonder if he even knew he was creating a three stooges utopia. It is a very unwittingly traditional family filled with tragedy, denial and sadness but coupled with the greatest love of music and the motto, “The only thing funnier than someone falling down is death.”
