“Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow,” said Mrs. Ramsey. “But you’ll have to be up with the lark,” she added.

These words came to my mind as we chatted at the dinner table. It is predicted that it will be rainy until tomorrow afternoon, followed by a chance of thunderstorms rolling in. Over the next ten days, there are only three that aren’t expected to include some sort of precipitation.

Fiona was concerned. Will we be able to go have a picnic on the New Haven Green tomorrow and listen to They Might Be Giants play as part of the New Haven Festival of Arts and Ideas?

”But”, said his father, stopping in front of the drawing-room window, “it won’t be fair.”

Had there been an axe handy, or a poker, any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father’s breast and killed him, there and then, James would have seized it. Such were the extremes of emotion that Mr. Ramsay excited in his children’s breasts by his mere presence.

No, I did not interject that tomorrow would not be fair. I hope it will be. Nor do I believe that Fiona glanced around the room looking for a poker. I am prepared to sit in the rain to listen to music, if the show does not get cancelled. I’ve sat with my family on the side of a hill in the rain listening to folk music many times and a little rain won’t keep me away.

Yet I’ve sometimes wondered about the extremes of emotion that I might excite in my children’s breasts. Perhaps there is a little bit of Mr. Ramsey, or even Mr. Carmichael from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse in me.

Towards the end of dinner, I got up and searched for my copy of To the Lighthouse. Fiona joined me in the search, but to no avail. In the end, I grabbed a copy of Remembrance of Things Past.

For a long time I used to go to bed early, I start reading. I’ve explained to Fiona that this is a book for adults, but that it starts with a wonderful recollection that I hoped she would be able to relate to.

Yes, she did relate to having to go to bed early sometimes. I continued, Sometimes, when I had put out my candle. I paused to talk about the days before electric lights. I read a little bit more, but Fiona became distracted. Yes, she remembers times of being caught between sleep and wakefulness, but the cat is outside and should be let in before the thunderstorms come.

I mentioned to Fiona how years ago, I had read parts of Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man to Mairead and Miranda when they were around her age.

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming
down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road
met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...

His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a
glass: he had a hairy face.

He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne
lived: she sold lemon platt.

They did not believe that I was really reading a literary classic to them. Was I making things up? Making fun of them? They checked the words on the page, and sure enough, there was the verbiage of the hairy-faced father. Now, Miranda is studying art in college.

It seems like there always needs to be the crazy uncle, perhaps with opium stains on his beard like Mr. Carmichael and for some reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about the confraternity of crazy uncles recently.

The idea started to take shape at a Memorial Day Picnic where I found myself in that role. In the Monomyth or the hero’s journey, particularly as described by Joseph Campbell in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, upon the reluctant return of the hero, he must live in two worlds, the divine and the mundane and from that, there remains something otherworldly of the returned hero. It reminds me of the great old saying, “Curiosity killed the cat. Satisfaction brought him back. Never was the same old cat.”

Is that what sets apart the confraternity of crazy uncles? They have been through some hero’s journey, and come back scarred and carrying a vision. It might not be the mythic hero’s journey that Campbell and others write about. It could simply be from feeling life just a little bit too closely.

I pause as I write this. There was another thought I wanted to weave in here. I glance at the piles of junk scattered around me as I try to write. I glance at the time. I am very tired as I try to write this. I cannot recapture the thought right now. It will have to wait.