An Evening Out

My uncle recently had surgery, and because I hadn’t seen him over the holidays, I planned to stop by  for a visit a couple days after he got home from the hospital.

Except he had already gone back to work.

So, instead of visiting, I made plans for Dave and me to meet up with him and his wife for dinner. And, for the  heck of it, I invited one of my other uncles and his wife. (Upon discovering this, my other family members are probably going to be upset with me because I didn’t invite them. Don’t worry, I love you too.)

These two uncles are 4 and 6 years older than me. Rumor has it the older brother was a mistake, and the younger brother was intended to keep the mistake company. However, what actually happened was the older brother would antagonize the younger brother to the breaking point (which wasn’t very far), and the younger brother would retaliate physically and get in trouble. (Now my grandmother is upset with me.)

Thinking back on the evening, trouble was a main theme of our conversation. We reminisced about the trouble we got into as kids and as adults (well, the men did). We talked about the trouble friends and family have gotten (us) into. We talked about our kids getting into trouble. And I know there were a lot of other stories that didn’t come up. I got the feeling that we were all slightly disbelieving and thankful that things had turned out so well despite the trouble while at the same time thinking it was no big deal. That’s what people do. They work through their troubles.

There was lots of other conversation – dinner lasted close to 4 hours – as well as good food. We commented that it was nice to feel comfortable having oysters on the half shell and rare tuna in front of fellow diners.

As we bundled up to head out into the snow for our 45 minute drives back to our respective houses, the consensus was we would have to do this again. (Let me know if you want to be invited.)