Remembering Uncle Archer

What does knitting while colouring my hair and listening to Karen Akers sing about relationships have to do with my Uncle Archer, dead at least 40 years? If I were being literary I would say stream of consciousness, because when she sang about the good and bad, I couldn’t help but think of him with Auntie Maud and one memory flowed into another.

The woman could not sit on our porch without his brushing off imaginary dirt before her bottom touched down, nor could I forget his rushing upstairs to get her sweater before the temperature thought of dropping.

They were a couple in every sense of the word, and he loved her in a way that I have never been loved by a man.

Thank God.

Admittedly, when I list my successes male/female relationships will not be there, and had a man ever been so smothering one of us would not have survived. Yet he was a good man, and the relationship must have worked for them, although Auntie Maud would shrug off the sweater when he wasn’t looking.

Uncle Archer, Charles Archer Stockbridge, if you use his whole name, was a fussbudget and Dar’s (my grandmother’s) older brother. He was born between Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays in the 1880s. They were devoted. Although he lived in New Jersey, he called her every Sunday using his complimentary AT&T privileges as an executive. She was as regular as he was in sending him penuche and dates stuffed with hard sauce for his birthday.

Twice a year he and Auntie Maud would drive up in his Buick, always black, always spotless. We, my brother and I, dreaded his visits for we had to be on our best behaviour. Dar wanted us to outshine his two grandchildren Joanie and Cynthia, both older than I was. Not that we were bad children, but we had to be extra good and not complain about our routine being upset.
Before he came, Dar bustled around making the house spotless, buying the white eggs and type of toilet tissue that he liked. And if we were really good we could go to the restaurant he loved in nearby Wakefield so he could eat friend clams. I was more impressed with the tomato juice seasoned with a slice of lemon as I tried to make sure I kept my hand in the lap except when I wiped my lips before each sip with the stiff-starched linen napkin.

Whether it is memory or stream of consciousness, I can picture him sitting next to Auntie Maud on the porch after the dishes were done, her white hair in a bun a contrast to his bald head. She would be talking about kittens and their pansy faces, or some other pleasant topic. My brother and I might be catching fireflies or doing anything in the pine grove out front so we wouldn’t have to sit still.

She died first and with her went his will to live.

Even my writer’s imagination cannot comprehend the devotion of their couple and only with hindsight can I appreciate it and him without the understanding. And by the time I thought all that, it was time to wash the colour out of my hair.