Butter pie

March 31, 2014

If anything should happen, 

          we'll be sure to give a ring.

I call Uncle Albert (See Just outside of Paradise and A friend in need.) once a week, another of my duties as my mother’s son, his adoptive nephew − though that’s not the true state of our relationship: I am not so much his adoptive nephew as he is my adoptive uncle. Just as I’m assigned to visit twice a year, I’m expected to call once a week those weeks none of his six “nieces” or “nephews” is with him. In both cases, visits and calls, my sister is the organizer. She sends out the schedule, so that we know the two (different) weeks we’re supposed to visit − for me this year one in March and one in August − and which days we are supposed to call the three weeks of each month no one is with him. This quarter I have Sundays, which is a blessing.

          I write that “Sundays” and “a blessing,” tongue in cheek; but there is some truth in the idea. It is a blessing to call on Sundays, because there is always something to talk about. There’s always something to talk about, because Uncle Albert goes to church whenever he can. Most often he drives himself. But, if the weather is bad (but not awful, as it can be), some one of his friends, most of whom are female and all of whom are younger, will come to get him. So, there is little for me to say. I ask him, “How was church?” and he tells me in some, odd detail; or, if he’s missed, he tells me why. Usually, it’s not weather but what he calls “beaucoup de gas,” elongating both the a and the s: beaucoup de gaaaassssss.  “I personally don’t mind farting in church, as you know.”  I do know, because he tells me every time. “I don’t mind, but others seem to. If God doesn’t fart, neither in God’s sanctuary should we, God’s people.”  Then, he’ll talk about the various symptoms of beaucoup de gas and some of the other times he’s been afflicted − or inflated − by it.

          But, yesterday he went. So: “How was church?”

          “Church was church,” he always begins and almost immediately veers not off the subject but into one of its murkier corners. The tangent almost begins, “What I don’t understand is . . . .”

Perhaps I should pause to say that I don’t think Uncle Albert goes to church because he “believes in the Lord”; on the other hand, he doesn’t go just to get out of the house. I puzzle about his motives, though I suspect the single most important is curiosity. Curiosity with Uncle Albert has never been a passing fancy, let me add. It is typical of his curiosity that he’s been following it to church for eighty years.

          So he knows a lot about churches, but what he knows isn’t entirely clear (to me), because he’s not paying attention to the things most church-goers are paying attention to. In this pause, let me add three of Uncle Albert’s observations about institutions. (These are all from one conversation three years ago; I wrote them down immediately afterward.)  They may bear on the church, if not directly.

1. Institutions are designed to make the institutionalized lose track. In fact, institutions create mazes into which the institutionalized go lost, so they can point that out, “You are lost.”  (By “institutionalized” Uncle Albert means anyone involved in the institution − not just the patients but the therapists, not just the students but the deans, not just the parishioners but the bishops.)
2. Old patterns are not like old people. The older they are the less sluggishly they move.
3. You can’t poke holes in fog.

          “How was church?”

          “What I don’t understand is why the preacher wants to come down and stand on the floor for the sermon. Sometimes she does and sometimes she doesn’t, and I don't understand why. It’s not like she’s just decided she’s going to talk to us this Sunday instead of  preachin’, because she’s always preaching; she’s never not telling us what we ought to be doing, even if you told her that’s what she was doing, she’d deny it.”

          “Uh-huh. Deny what?”

          “That she’s telling us what we ought to be doing.”

          “The preacher’s job, I guess.”

          “Then why try to disguise it?”

          “Is that what she’s doing? − I don’t know.”

          “Why else would she come down and play like she was talking?”

          “You know her better than I do.”

          “I don’t think she knows herself.”

          “She doesn’t know herself, what?  She doesn’t know herself why she’s coming down? Or, she doesn’t know herself period?”

          “Either one. She’s very nice, very nice; but I don’t know how smart she is.”

          “I’m not sure what smart has to do with this, Uncle A.”

          “Why doesn’t she take all her paraphernalia off before she comes down − her robe and what’s-it- called . . . stole and that damn rope she wears as a belt though it doesn't hold anything up? You can’t go under cover in uniform.”

          “Uh-huh.”

          “Well, unless you’re under cover in a police station. Or you’re a detective for some reason pretending you’re a beat cop.”

          “That’s an interesting idea.”

          “She’s wearing regular clothes − or regular Sunday clothes − plain clothes under all that stuff. She doesn’t take her skirt and blouse off to put the robe on, does she?”

          “I wouldn’t think so.”

          “Of course, underneath all of it she’s naked.”

          “Yes?”

          “She could talk to us naked. The naked truth.”

          “Uh.”

          “If there were such a thing.”

          “Yes, well.”

          “Notice the subjunctive.”

          “Yes. I did notice, Uncle Albert.”

          “Good.”

But I had to wonder, though I didn’t say it, if the subjunctive isn’t a way of trying to poke holes in fog.

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