Boxers In Branches

This morning I woke up and looked out my bedroom window. There, dangling from the branches of one of my Maples was a pair of black boxer briefs. On My God, I thought.. Am I being haunted by the ghosts of boyfriends past? Then I hear CNN blaring from the living room and realize that the undies in the tree belong to my dear, eccentric Uncle B who is currently visiting us from Brooklyn.

My Uncle B is both the kindest and strangest man that I have ever met. He hails from Brooklyn where he is the only white man in NYC that speaks Haitian Creole. He has never bought anything that did not come from a yard sale or that cost more than 75 cents. He wears a large straw hat year round and washes his clothes every night in the bathroom ( he calls it the baaathroom) sink with a bar of soap and then hangs them to dry all over the house and yard. He refuses to say goodbye in his native English language- instead it is Bonn Voyage- Arrivadercci,- Swasage (I think that is Creole) etc.



Uncle B drinks water with a splash of wine and swears that the french aristocracy did the same. He loves suspensful movies from the 1990s and just about any book ever written. Uncle B's jokes make sense to only himself and maybe Alex Trebeck- and he laughs at them in a cackle that resembles the wicked witch of the wests.



While in VT he spent most of his time reading, watching the news and parading around the house in my pink flip flops, a straw hat, and a glass of french-water-wine. Uncle B is supposed to be coming up again next summer. Next year we are going to rent a lake house so that Uncle B doesn't have to sleep on our couch. We'll play scrabble talk about our family history (snore), and drape our undergarments on the trees that frame the shore line of Lake Dunmore and I cant wait! So until then, Ciao Uncle B...Ciao!