I am a Bad Uncle
Last night my nephew called to ask me for help. He must have called twice since it got through the “do not disturb” feature/defense system on my phone. Not that I totally woke up. That took about 30 mins since I was stuck in that state between still napping and being awake. I called him back and realized he just needed me to read an essay. He’s currently busting his ass in a leadership class, and he’s determined to do well. By the way, my nephew is 33. (He’s the oldest of the ones on my mother’s side, but I have nephews and nieces who are older than me on my father’s side. My family history is a bit complicated).
All of that to say that the request was by no means exceptional enough for me to write an essay about it. But then I realized that it was the first time that ANY of my nieces or nephews had asked me to comment on their writing and it made me wonder:
Am I a bad uncle? The short answer is yes if you do not have time to read the rest.
Mind you, I don’t write that with any feelings of guilt. I did not have kids for a reason, and I definitely do not feel directly responsible for anyone else’s. Yet, I think this an important topic to explore because it is really about transitions and life surprising you when you do not expect it.
I am the baby of a blended family and while I have always found it completely normal some of the dynamics were atypical. I grew up with my mother’s children and my oldest nephew was born a couple days after my eighth birthday. I was technically already an uncle and I was a child, so this role did not have any particular significance to me. Instead my role, as the youngest child of older parents, was always to have their backs.
If there’s one thing that I’m unabashedly proud of is that I was a great son. My parents and I were always very close, so naturally as their health declined my energies were focused on them. We lost our Mom unexpectedly (in terms of timing) in 2014, and I then took care of my Dad until he died in 2017. The mourning was intense, but the silver lining is that with no kids on the horizon I was done with my caretaking. My 40s were about to be fun.
I did a lot of work trying to figure out what the world without my parents would look like: more traveling, less anxiety about their health, more time to focus on my career, etc. It sounded better than it actually was. The much harder work was accepting that the world would never be as wonderful. Without my parents in it, it just isn’t. But I’ve come to accept that this second best version can be quite awesome as well.
I have written before about how I searched for freedom for a good part of my life only to find that I needed more structure. Well it turns out that my freedom from my family has instead turned into a shift in my role. I think I’m closer to my siblings now than at any time in the last 20 years. My motto is that they were meant to be in their 50s: they’re absolutely hilarious now. That has been fun. But I also increasingly worry about their health. So far so good.
What is catching me by surprise is that perhaps this could be a time for me to lean into this uncle role that I have neglected for most of my life. It’s quite unbelievable that my nephews and nieces have an uncle who works in academia and yet I’ve never looked at their writing, given them advice on schools, or even really discussed my career with them.
Part of this is my family culture. We’re pretty individualistic when it comes to problem solving, and we have a tendency to keep things close to the vest. However, now that I have more bandwidth in my life I can be more proactive.
Things I will never provide: babysitting services (yes, my nephews and nieces have kids), advice on children in general, tolerance for homophobia, sexism, etc. (we’re black so I figure they know better than to be racist).
However, I do have a great portfolio of things I’m pretty darn excellent at: (1) general life advice (my Mom utilized these services for decades), (2) secrets and stories about the lives of their parents (there are many), (3) pictures and family history (I’m the baby but I’m the keeper of the knowledge), (4) good cooking (my mac and cheese is pretty decent), (5) great drinks and dinner on me. I welcome them to take me up on any of these.
On the road to a glamorous, globe-trotting, high achieving bachelor lifestyle (more like a life of picking up dog shit) I guess can also make a tiny bit of time for other people’s kids.
