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Show 1-2 if he came home late and I heard her tell my mother that she always looked in on him before she went to sleep, just as she had one when he was a baby. He seemed to share the special vulnerability of all the young men, a vulnerability we others did not possess. One year after he left for France, Uncle Paul died. I remember the sound my mother made when she read the telegram and the wails from the bedroom where my grandmother lay for three days. I remember the look on my grandfather's face when he came back to the house from the shed where he had chopped wood for an hour after the telegram came. I knew that Uncle Paul would not return. I was not sure why. But that day I learned that anything so easily lost must be of great value. Each young body, so deceptively strong and alive, must be made of the frailest material, like a bird's nest perched on the branch of a tree. Each young man must be treasured by those who would miss him if he were gone. This I learned from Uncle Paul. My parents taught me other lessons, during those years. That my mother was unusual I did not know. I did know that I loved her enormously. I loved my father too, and loved the way they were together. Their love for one another and for me made a wholeness of our lives that I knew was unusual, even at that time. Other families were strained and loud with one another. While my parents argued, and disciplined me carefully, the fact of love was always there. My father was unusual too, not so much for himself but that he put up with my mother, protected her against what she might have brought on herself and defended her by staying with her. He loved her continually even as she tested her love for him. It was partly my own sense of loss while he was in New York that made me |