Boats, Love, Death, and Neil Diamond: A Memory of Some Kind of a Man

I just heard that Robert S Woods is signing on to PP.  Thank God.  I need me some good guy and there aren't enough Bo's in the world today.  But it means a little more to me today. I've been in a group of crying women for a long time.

Someone I loved died today. I don't think this has much to do with daytime drama, but there is some connection. I think some people's lives are more like soaps than any soap opera could ever be.  My uncle was a man right out of a daytime drama. He wasn't a Bo but he was more of a gray character. And I couldn't have been luckier to have had him in my life. He truly loved me.
 
People are hard to know and often harder to understand. I think my uncle was Adam Chandler without the swank. He was David Hayward without the brilliance. He was Todd Manning without the money.  But what he and Bo and all these characters had in common was that undying devotion to family.  When they loved you, they loved all the way. It could be overbearing and maddening and suffocating, but there was no doubt that they loved you.  Sometimes it made you want to run, but when it came down to it, it could keep you warm. And safe. And you always had your family.

I suppose we all have memories of people when they die. I'll remember my uncle on his speed boat. He always had a speedboat. He always had a boat he was playing with outside his house. I'm not kidding. Outside the house.  On the lawn. In the suburbs or at the beach.  That doesn't go over well with the neighbors.  Or the village.  But he kept those boats out there. No matter how many citations he got. Or even when they came and took the boat away.  He'd just get another one. It became a running joke with the family. I remember my cousin took a picture of a boat outside a house and sent it to all of us. No comment, just the picture. I laughed for days. I knew what she meant.

At any rate, I'll always remember my uncle on the boat, smoking, shirtless in his "trunks"- light blue with the fake belt- and he's trying to get the boat into the marina.  It's not going well. It's about 1974.   He can't get the boat positioned right so my cousin is jumping into the water and trying to push the boat with her little body weight. He keeps trying to make it work and eventually, it does.  But the whole time he's singing "Song Sung Blue" by Neil Diamond. He's laughing and not at all concerned about the situation. It's summer and we're in the country and he's on his boat with all his girls. And he's happy.

I'm wearing a life vest and I hate it.  My father makes me wear it and no one else has to. I'm the youngest of the kids- all seven girls- and because I'm "the baby", I'm wearing the lifevest. But I'm looking at my uncle, shirtless, blonde, smoking, and singing. My cousins are all skinny, blonde, in  bikinis, and jumping into the water. I wanted to be like them. They didn't wear life vests.  I did and I wasn't blonde and I didn't get to jump in the water and I didn't wear bikinis. With that lifevest, I'd just float anyway. It's neon orange and it's hot and I hate it.  I didn't belong on that boat. I wasn't like them.  But I did belong because my uncle loved me.

My uncle was a real contradiction. He was hard edged and crazy and funny and beautiful and did I say crazy?  He was a charmer and a serious curmudgeon.  But he was also loving and caring and soft hearted and giving. He could be difficult and selfish and even cruel yet he never showed me anything but affection and respect and love. He made me feel safe and special. I knew when the cards were down, he'd "knock skulls" to protect me. And more than anything, he loved me.

But he was singing Neil Diamond.  Or he was in the courtyard outside our cottages in the sand. He was lighting the fireworks on the Fourth of July.  He was the only father with the nerve. My father always said that Jews don't play with fireworks. But my uncle did. And they don't work on boats. But my uncle did. And they don't walk around shirtless in their "trunks". But my uncle did. And they weren't blonde and beautiful, but my uncle was. As I said, he was a contradiction. He was everything he shouldn't have been, but he was what he was. He was my uncle and he loved me.

There's great line from the film "Touch of Evil".  At the end, when Quinlan dies, Tanya, played by Marlena Dietrich, looks into the water and gives him this send off.  "He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?"  She then walks off into the night but we know she's thinking about him the whole time and will forever.  She has images in her mind of her time with him and doesn't feel the need to share. I think my uncle would like that.  So that's how I'll send him off.

He was some kind of a man.  

I think it doesn't matter what you say about people. It matters what you feel about them. And I loved that crazy schmuck.  The images I have of him are in his trunks, shirtless, washing his white "Mark" on Lake Shore Drive.  He's calling me "Dune", as he did, enunciating it low and long, and smiling at me. He's calling my aunt "Babe". And he's looking at me last week in the hospital.  Smiling. As we talked about that boat. He couldn't talk much but he did try to talk about that boat.  He was shirtless again and it seemed fitting. He smiled at me as I kissed him on the forehead. He looked at me and I knew that he loved me. I wish he'd called me "Dune" one more time, but he didn't. He just smiled.

I think I'll have to look into getting a little statue of a boat for my new house at the beach. He'd like that. I'll leave it outside. And then I'll play some Neil Diamond. "Forever in Blue Jeans", I think. And I'll go sit on a "dune". And have a damn good cry looking out onto the water and hope my uncle's out there, in that boat, and that it's finally fixed. But it's still in the yard...........