Uncle John - Cat's Cradle

I must have been eleven or so, when I first met Uncle John. But over time, my memory fragments, and I suppose I might have to make up what I can no longer recall.

Uncle John wasn’t really our uncle, although he was distantly related to us on my father’s side. His last name was the same as ours, but Mennonites had tended to stick to their own kind over the years and apparently that name thing was the kind of thing that snuck around like a dog chasing its tail.

But Uncle John was quite unlike anyone I had ever met. It’s true that he looked like a lot of older men I knew. He was tall and thin, yet a little jowly in the face. His hair was wispy. But mostly, I remember, there was light and laughter in his eyes. He had lost his wife some time before I could know her. A coincidence only, but I think that she had had the same first name as my mom. But all the folks are gone now, so who would I ask?

Uncle John came over to our house one evening. He was visiting from California. He sat in the soft chair near the stereo, a large, rich-looking, wooden cabinet with mediocre electronics and a record player under the hinged lid. A magazine rack, with an assortment of magazines that I didn’t care about, sat off to one side.

How Uncle John first enticed us – that is, me and my younger brother – I don’t recall. But I remember standing next to that chair, struggling to open his clenched fist. We would pull at a thumb, then try prying at a finger. I’m not sure if anything was inside, but Uncle John was the sort of person who came bearing gifts.

Whether that night, or some other night, he gave me ‘Cat’s Cradle.’ That is, he brought us loops of parachute cord, a silky, soft, woven cord that he had gleaned from somewhere. He had cut the cord to length and hand-spliced the ends with needle and thread. He showed us how the game worked – looping loops from finger to hand, weaving the cord into triangles and diamonds. I used a red and a blue magic marker, making several bands of color on my cord where Uncle John had stitched the ends so that I could distinguish my Cat’s Cradle loop from my brother’s. I know that that simple loop traveled with me for many moves from place to place and for all I know it might still rest somewhere among some of my childhood treasures.

I remember later trying to visit Uncle John at his place in California when I was considerably older. He wasn’t home. He had some orchard, I think. His house was well run-down, the yard filled with junk or maybe it was all useful stuff in his hands. A neighbor said that he apparently liked to sometimes eat at MacDonald’s because he liked the people there. And I think he might have occasionally spent the night at a nearby homeless shelter. Or maybe he was sharing his gifts there.

I’m pretty sure I will only partly understand my Uncle John’s life. I saw only fragments after all. But I remember him. And now I look at the world with eyes about the age of his when I first met him and he shared some of his gifts with me. I see children who are young like I was then when I met my Uncle John. I wonder if they know about Cat’s Cradle.