Uncle Tim

Reinvention and Faith

Uncle Tim sitting in a booth on a late Friday morning enjoying Waffle House eggs and bacon exudes a level of energy like he just finished whitewater rafting or something. He’s not twitchy or restless; his battery just always seems to be fully charged and raring to go.

“Bingo!” he says, tilting his head, eyebrows raised, and enthusiastically pointing at me.

That’s what I received whenever Uncle Tim and I found an area of agreement or when I said something that rang true. It might surprise many to hear that, over the course of our four days together, I got a fair number of “Bingos,” quite a few “exaaaaactly-s,” and regularly heard, “That’s what I’m saying!” 

That might surprise people because Tim is very opinionated, but also, Tim can be intense as f*ck. 

It’s an intensity that not only led him to start and run his own business but also to get into insanely good shape, a 2nd-degree black belt in karate, and even into the ring for a fighting competition all in his fifties.

He just operates at an energetic frequency us mere mortals need four Redbulls or the better half of an 8-ball to achieve.

That energy and constant exploration have allowed him to remake himself more than once during the ups and downs of life. He’s a bit of a renegade in many ways, going to Jeffers High School while his siblings went to Houghton, cheering for the Blackhawks or Lions while his entire family are all Red Wings and Packer fans, and living in South Carolina while they all reside in Michigan. 

He’s got passion, he’s got a lot of opinions, and he’s not afraid to share them. We both see the world through a very political lens, and I have my own perspective, which as a long-haired millennial vegan who lived for almost a decade in Europe, is usually very different from Uncle Tim’s. 

For that reason, many probably assumed we’d be at each others’ throats if left alone for too long, and when I reached out to him at the beginning of this project asking if we could hang out, he joked that he, “could use a good sparring partner.”

But we’ve both toned it down in the last few years and didn’t spend any time in a heated debate on political philosophy.

I wasn’t interested in that.

I was there to connect with Tim, another uncle I’d never really talked to for more than a few minutes.