Uncle Colonel the Tap Dancer

So, I grew up, Catholic ... meaning, in a family with more than the average number of siblings ... as did my Catholic cousins ...

When we got together - which I think we did frequently enough - we were a massive bunch.

Oh, while visiting, we'd drive carelessly through the streets, and hills of West Point, sans those pesky seat belts, ten in a car - with an adult at the wheel (I think, or was it my cousin, Patrick, age 9 at the time? Hmmm, hard to say.)

Ah, the '60s ... while the country was fighting in a foreign land, or fighting in our land because there was fighting in a foreign land … we were young and free ...

Free to go jutting forward into the dashboard when the car stopped just a little too abruptly. I think we all have THOSE scars ... I do, still do, on my right eye.

I digress ... again.

I recently came across a picture of one particular summer spent in the company of my cousins at West Point. We are a happy, very rumpled familial group starring intently on my Uncle, the Major's hands - he is frozen in time, gesturing, I think, the universal symbol for "small word." I'm sure we never got it ... I'm sure it was "the" or "an" or "a" ...

But the picture reveals so much ... ah, the commitment from my Uncle ... the "in the moment" need to perform the "small word" with such clarity, urgency ... it's on his face, it's on our faces ...

I also came across another picture of my Uncle, the Colonel, who for reasons I can't recall, is wearing silver tap shoes in my mother's backyard. He was good, as I recall ... or maybe not ... all I know, he was wearing tap shoes, and looked again ... "in the moment" with precision toe-heel movements.

That's my Uncle, the General.

And I think that reveals so much about my relations.