The side of the family I SHOULD have been born into

My maternal grandmother has a younger brother - my great-uncle L.

That's him on the right.

Uncle L retired to Florida 16 years ago (probably about the time this picture was taken) after a career as an English professor.  Shortly thereafter, he and his wife G started making summer trips to visit the Maine relatives, which is how my family reconnected with them after we moved back in 2004 - prior to that, we'd periodically exchanged warm correspondence but I hadn't actually seen them since I was a child.

During these annual visits, we - Uncle L, Aunt G and I - gradually came to realize we had something in common, something we kept silent about and hid from the rest of the family.

What I'm describing is basically gaydar for progressives.

You cannot imagine two more disparate groups of people than my grandmother's branch of the family and Uncle L's. 

My grandmother is a lifelong fundamentalist, college dropout and teetotaler who believes Obama is the Muslim Communist Antichrist, homosexuality is an abomination, salvation is predetermined and that anything Dr. James Dobson says is the God's-gospel truth.

Uncle L is a lifelong agnostic, PhD and enthusiastic imbiber who believes Michele Bachmann is an evolutionary throwback, the Tea Party is an abomination, homosexuality is predetermined and nothing anyone says is ever the God's-gospel truth.

Well, except for maybe Bart Erhman.  He likes Bart Ehrman a lot.

For her part, Aunt G is a delightfully irreverant and off-the-wall character who lives to corrupt children, torment telemarketers and ridicule religion and Republicans.  The fact that both of them were divorced before they married each other is a shame that my grandmother has yet to overcome, but that was 48 years ago and so far it seems to be working out okay for them.  Knock wood.

This year, they couldn't manage the trip to Maine.  Uncle L is 86, after all, and though the spirit is willing (this is one seriously sharp old dude), the flesh isn't quite up for it.

So that's why we went to Florida earlier this month.  We saw some of the sights and visited cousins I hadn't seen in thirty years (there are seven children, between his and hers and theirs; it can get confusing).  We sat up late talking about everything from family lore to politics and religion to literature and music. We did jigsaw puzzles and laughed a lot.  Aunt G did her best to corrupt the children, but they're already irretrievably damaged.

I'm glad we got to see them.  It was worth braving Florida in August.