For Uncle Fatty's funeral, it was just Aunt Louise and me. Ryan was not ablto come and was upset that she could not because she had loved Uncle Fatty too. I was glad Ryan had the chance to know him and would have liked having her there with me and Aunt Louise. But at the time of Uncle Fatty's funeral, Ryan was in the middle of two years of undergraduate studies at a private Catholic university, the University of Dayton. She had earned a two-year degree at our local community college, Sinclair Community College, attending on scholarships and Pell Grants. Ryan had been on the Dean's List each quarter of those two years so U.D. was happy to admit her. She had worked very hard to earn her grades at Sinclair and was determined to excel in her studies at the university level as well. She would be taking midterm exams within a few days of Uncle Fatty's funeral, so I had encouraged her to stay behind at home so she could study and prepare for them.
Ryan did excel, graduating Magna Cum Laude from U.D. with a 3.87 GPA in her Bachelor of Arts undergraduate degree. Because of her academic achievements, the university offered her a teaching assistantship to attend Graduate School. This meant that U.D. paid for her graduate classes, her books, and on-campus housing. Ryan taught undergraduate English classes to incoming Freshmen students and took the required classes to earn a Masters degree. It was more difficult than she anticipated but she stuck with it. Two years later, she graduated with a 4.0 GPA. Yes, she achieved her goal of excelling academically. My husband and I are enormously proud of her. What made it so special was that Ryan herself decided she would be an honors student and she worked hard to achieve it. At one point because of her poor choice of friends who had a negative influence on her, combined with her own total disinterest in schoolwork, we doubted she would graduate high school. But here she was with not one but two degrees. Amazing what can be achieved when a person sets a goal and works to make it happen.
Uncle Fatty was a big favorite with Ryan the same as he was for me, my brother, my sisters, and many of my cousins. He always had a soft spot for all the children in the family, but a heart of absolute mush when it came to the little girls. All the kids knew Uncle Fatty would spoil them with hugs and treats, and make them laugh with some joke or the way he would tease them. And he could always be talked into letting you sit on his lap and steer his pickup truck on the backcountry roads in the rural area we grew up in.
One of the more fun things to do though was to stand in front of Uncle Fatty and steer the farm tractor. Sitting behind you on the wide metal seat, softened with an old worn, beat-up cushion, Uncle Fatty would pretty much let you go wherever you wanted to. But he was always watching and ready to grab the wheel if you headed the tractor in the wrong direction or were about to hit something. And there was sure plenty of room to drive that big old John Deere on the 80 acres which surrounded the barn, the smaller outbuildings, and the farmhouse.
What kid doesn't want a piece of that!
BẠN ĐANG ĐỌC
The Family Pecking Order -- A Memoir
Phi Hư CấuFollowing the death of my father, memories and feelings came flooding out after the experience of attending his funeral. Where was I in the "pecking order" of my family? How did such a thing as birth order affect my life?
