I talk about family a lot, mainly because it’s a theme in my life. I’ve seen he best of Italian nd I have seen the worst of it. The notion that someone who is related to you is one of the most important people in your life is both obvious and nonsensical at the same time. Mix that in with how friends can become more than friends, and you have a confused notion of what family is. Well, not confused, but what your experience tells you family is turns out to be different from what family starts to mean for you.

I got the idea to write a letter to an uncle I haven’t seen in years, a loner who moved far away from everyone else to have his own family. When I was younger, he showed up to my HS graduation, and we visited him once. Cool cat, and was very, very skeptical about the rest of the family bullshit.

Thing is, I don’t know what to say to him. “Hi” is a bit too…trite? I know how he’s doing; the rest of the family speaks of him in whispers and angry screeds about how “he think he better” because he saw fit to leave family drama in a physical space he’s chosen not to inhabit. The last time he was among “family” was for a funeral.

But I don’t know what to say. Or how. Because all of this family baggage. How does one write and avoid any elephants currently in the room? How can one be polite? How can one avoid writing”Hey, things are effed up and I thought to write you”? A bit too on the nose, I think.

So, I’ll put this paper away, because I have plenty other sheets that, when it comes time, I can fill it with what I’d feel like I needed to say, and when I needed to say it.