Tim

When I searched for a photo of us to contribute to Uncle Tim’s 80th birthday celebration last March I came up empty. Apparently rage grief can make a person find anything. My grandmother’s handwriting on the back says this is 12-30-95, which means it was my senior year. I have no doubt they chatted me up about what my college plans were. Funny to think about that as my youngest child struggles over similar choices during senior year.  I can hear just how Aunt Susan’s voice would have sounded, but people we simply don't have time to cry about the person who’s been gone since 2007, because we’re focusing on the one we just lost. Oh Uncle Tim. Uncle Tim had a gentle demeanor and a beautiful soul. His son Andrew and I were kindred spirits growing up, on the younger (and perhaps nerdier) end of a gaggle of 10 cousins. To Uncle Tim I’m not sure I was ever Carrie (as I was to the majority of the family), but always Caroline. We likely all have very different impressions of Uncle Tim from childhood, but mine is that he treated us like mini adults, always wanting to know what we were up to, what interested us, and what we thought about the world. 

On one Annapolis visit our Nana described Uncle Tim’s very premature birth at their home while our grandfather  dashed across the street to phone the doctor. Tim spent weeks in the hospital, visited just once a week by family, and when he finally came home Nana would walk to a farm miles away to get him goat’s milk to drink. That tiny baby grew into a curious boy whom my mom, the youngest of the five Dangel siblings, remembers”was always so bright.”  Being a boy who preferred sewing, reading and playing the piano over sports probably wasn’t easy in their household, or 1950s Blair County, but one thing I always appreciated about Uncle Tim was his willingness to be unapologetically himself and the fact that he always saw each of his nieces and nephews for who we are as well. He became a science teacher, and then eventually, after earning a doctorate,  did something fancy for Anne Arundel county that as a non-educator I’ve never been entirely clear on, but it involved curriculum and assessment and he was good at it. He also taught courses at Goucher college, and many former students have sung his praises in the last few days, but with family, or at least with our little section of it, I don’t really remember him talking about work. What I do remember is his great pride in Andrew and eventually Andrew’s family, and in his decades of performances with the Annapolis Chorale, where he was still singing well into his 70s. He loved being a grandfather. 

He and Aunt Susan had a beautiful marriage, and though I never could have articulated it as a kid, I believe it showed me what a relationship might be. It opened possibilities. I have a LOT of aunts and uncles. Theirs was the relationship I hoped mine might resemble one day. Tim & Susan welcomed family for many visits to Annapolis, where we would walk the grounds of the Naval Academy, or see the boats lit with Christmas lights, or where once Andrew and I made a very regrettable camcorder video where made what I think we thought was a Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous style tour of their house. I hope it’s lost to the sands of time. Tim & Susan were responsible for my first visit to the Smithosonian museums, helped fund a high school trip to Germany, and made sure I started my marriage with a German cookbook in hand. 

They always gave us the most thoughtful gifts from the introduction of Richard Scarry to our family for my brother John’s third birthday, to a set of tiny “color your own” rugs during my dollhouse phase, to the many books that they, and eventually just Uncle Tim would bestow on their great-nieces and nephews for their birthdays. When they took a trip to the UK in the early 80s they returned with tiny tiny boxes decorated by Beatrix Potter characters for my sisters and I. I loved mine so much it came along to college. 

Though it’s surely a trick of memory, I don’t ever remember seeing Uncle Tim in a bad mood. Not when we visited the hospital after he had brain surgery when Andrew and I were in middle school, not when his mobility was severely hampered by some hip and balance issues in later years. He always smiled. He was always glad to see us. In the last few days I’ve thought of the specific way  the Luckner cousins’ voices would soften just a little when they asked how “”and how’s Tim” when they visited my grandmother. One of the comments on my cousin’s post about his father’s death said “a prince of a man.” I could not agree more. He was beloved. 

After asking, as always, what I was reading Uncle TIm chatted away about his book club, the next books on his list, and his piano whe I spoke with him a few weeks ago. On St. Patrick’s Day I wore rainbow socks knit by Uncle Tim, and meant to message him to tell him. I wish I had. He was not perfect, because none of us are, but he was a good man, who believed deeply in the dignity of all people, and the power of public education, and I’ll miss him. A lot.