Two Degrees of Separation

Creepy, Creepier and Creepiest.

I happened upon a photograph today that literally made me sick to my stomach. It shows my first cousin, a bad egg named Suzanne Bennett with whom I have not spoken in more than a dozen years, happily tucked between our senile president Joe Biden and his snake-in-the-grass son Hunter, grinning stupidly as if she had just won a billion-dollar lottery. The fact that half the townsfolk of Nantucket took such pictures on the president's recent vacation there does not diminish my nausea.

Yes, seeing my blood relative actually touching both creepy Bidens is disturbing to me, six-degrees-of- separation-wise. Even more disturbing is that there exists no such grinning photo of Suzanne with her father, like the one of me with my beloved uncle who was my best friend from the day I was born (see photo below).

No, Suzanne didn't like her daddy for some reason. I guess it was because he bought her a pony when she was only ten, and then built a barn on their property in which to house Dandy, and gave her riding lessons until she didn't want them anymore, then didn't want Dandy anymore either. Or maybe because he paid for her to attend an expensive 4-year university in Arizona where she stayed only for three weeks because  ''it was too hot'' and "there was no grass." Or any number of other gifts he lavished upon his little girl over the course of her spoiled-rotten childhood, including buying her a townhouse in Baltimore and making a healthy contribution to her house on Nantucket.

Whatever the reason, once she turned 18 she flew the coop, got married, came back for the townhouse, got divorced, then married again, and stayed far, far away for the last 20 or so years of my uncle's life, including during his years of increasingly failing health until his death at age 85. I know from our many conversations how much pain this caused him. After he died I mourned his passing for a long time -- still do -- but at least I could be done with her.

And so now, today, that picture of her brought it all flooding back. Alas, one must be careful on Memory Lane; it's fraught with hidden landmines.