Lessons from Uncle Pete

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

He was my mother's uncle, not mine. I hardly knew him. But I knew about him. He was part of the family lore. "Stop slouching. You'll look like Uncle Pete." "What are you doing staring at the ground when you walk. You don't want to be like Uncle Pete."

Legend had it that Uncle Pete had in his house a huge coffer of change, which he found while out on his daily walks. His collection was his hobby, his outing, a quest. The one time I visited him, his wife, Aunt Mary said, as I sat on the living room couch next to my mother, "Why don't you show the child your collection?" This bent, old man disappeared for a minute and returned carrying a tin box full of dirty coins, which he held before me.

"I never come home without finding something. Just yesterday I found this here penny in front of the S&S," he said, plucking from the box a coin that had been run over by something.

I'd pictured the treasure differently. I'd imagined a pirate's chest full of shiny things. But this was no pirate's chest. It was rusty, dented tin, full of old pennies and their coppery smell.

It bothered me then, and it has bothered me since, that a man could spend his entire life with his eyes glued to the ground. The world changed around Uncle Pete. Houses were painted, windows washed. New curtains were hung. Old neighbors moved out, and new ones moved in. Businesses expanded or closed. People grew up, grew old, died. But he was oblivious. He marked his days by his booty, by what he had found on the street.

He died a long time ago. I don't think about him often, hardly at all, except now and then when I see a coin on the ground or a person stooped over, as if in search of one.

But Sunday morning, I was reminded of Uncle Pete as my husband, daughter and I were driving to Amherst. Sunday was flawless, but it was in the morning as I sat in the passenger seat, with an unopened newspaper in my lap, that I noticed, for the first time this spring, just how beautiful the world really is.

We're talking the Mass. Pike here, not the mountains of New Hampshire or the wild West. Nothing special about the Mass. Pike, not usually. Except on this Sunday the air was so clear it was like spring water, making everything bigger, brighter.

I don't think I've ever seen so many shades of green, not even in Ireland, and here they were, on the side of a road, almost an afterthought. I know I've never seen a sky so uniformly blue, except in picture books.

I realized then that all spring I've been like Uncle Pete. I've had my eyes on the ground. I've only glanced at the trees and at the world now in bloom. On my way to the library one day I noticed the magnolia blossoming. Driving to the post office I admired the forsythia. I even paused in front of my own paltry garden when the tulips finally flowered.

But I haven't savored any of this. I've inhaled spring on my way to the car, on my way to somewhere else. All the while the world has been spinning gold out of straw, I have been consumed with other things: With obligations and commitments. With this problem and that. With the bad news that seems endless. With things I must do and things I should do. I have had my head bent and my eyes on the ground.

"Why do you do this?" I wanted to ask Uncle Pete, a lifetime ago. "Don't you see all that you're missing?"

But most of us are like Uncle Pete, so intent on what we're doing, so swallowed up by routine and ritual that the world can dazzle, and still we don't pause.

I paused Sunday. I leaned back and, for a little while at least, finally looked around and appreciated the view