Me and Uncle Lou

I had the pleasure of attending my Uncle Pete’s wedding today at a historical residence in my hometown of Wilmington, CA. (That’s another blog entry, believe me.) Not only was it great to be in a residence with so much history, I enjoyed catching up with relatives I hadn’t seen in years.

The man you see me with above is one of them. Uncle Lupe, or Lou as he likes to be called these days, has always been the one person in the family with a reputation for being a little different. For example, he’ll just show up at your door unannounced. That’s not unusual until you consider that he lives in northern California, exact location unknown, and we’re in southern California. That’s just how he rolls and everybody in the family knows it.

Until he could no longer handle the physical and mental strain it placed upon him, he sailed often. In fact for his final adventure, he told me that he sailed to the Galapagos Islands in the middle of hurricane season. As he feverishly took notes on his laptop computer, it was then that he got the inspiration for his new book, due in June. (At the time he had no intentions of writing a book; only documenting his trip was his priority.)

Uncle Lou’s owned a surfboard shop in San Diego, has worked for the aerospace industry, and is also the author of Cut Flowers. Our family photo album is chock full of pictures of him doing various activities like scuba diving and anything involving the ocean. He’s always been sort of secretive about things he’s done, and that only added to his mystique. In short, you could say he’s the original version of The Most Interesting Man in the World. And being that I hadn’t seen him in years I felt compelled to speak with him about writing and everything that goes along with it.

We laughed, we discussed writing, we embraced and shook hands since, well, who knows when we’ll meet again. I learned enough from him in our brief time together to become inspired to do great things with the written word, and to never lose focus on the one thing, that one “push” as he called it, when it finally hits me.

And after hearing some of the stories my mom was telling me about growing up with Uncle Lou, I came to the realization that for better or worse, I have much more in common with him than previously thought. The mind of a writer definitely does not work on the same frequency as that of the mathematician, which could explain why the two of us had so much to speak about.

Meeting up with Uncle Lou has given me a new outlook on writing something beyond a blog, and that’s something I truly needed to hear. And Ann has his instructions to kick my rear into doing it.

He’s promised to send me a signed copy of Cut Flowers when he gets back home. When it arrives I am going to print a copy of the image you see above and place it inside for inspiration.

Thanks, Uncle Lou. You truly made my day.