Greg Quiroga - The Magic You Left

 

 

I was 10 years old when my parents got divorced. And my mom did the thing that made the most sense to her. She hooked up with my dad's sister's ex-husband, who'd always been Uncle Steve to me. He was a pot growing Vietnam veteran, who had lost his vocal cords to a hand grenade in Vietnam that blew up. 

 

It also opened up his knee, and it left him dead in the mass unit for all of three minutes, which greatly changed his perspective on life. It also made every metal detector he ever went through just light up like a Christmas tree. Everybody around us called him Whispering Steve, because he couldn't talk like normal. He whispered. I quickly adapted to Whispering Steve instead of Uncle Steve. 

 

The one thing about Whispering Steve, was that he'd always been a really good dad to his two sons, my brother cousins. [audience laughter] I'd always admired the way that he'd been a father to them. So, it wasn't so much like I had lost an uncle as gained a father in the vacuum that was left when my parents split up. 

 

Steve was this guy who always wanted there to be magic in the world, especially for the kids around him. He went to great lengths to make sure that there was magic filled every event that he took-- He didn't read stories at bedtime, he invented them. He told tales that had me and my brother cousins flying through the air on jetpacks with lightsabers, doing battle with orcs, where we were the heroes on a nightly basis. 

 

We never wanted to go to sleep. He made everything that happened-- Every moment that he could take and twist into a perfect opportunity for it to be fun for everybody he did. We were driving to San Francisco for the very first time. I had never seen the Golden Gate Bridge before. And this is back in the days before seat belts were mandatory. And so, the three of us are bouncing around in the backseat of his car, just all fired up. And he said, “I'll give--” I'm sorry. “I'll give a Hershey's candy bar to the first one of you that can spot the Golden Gate Bridge.” 

 

So, we're on high alert. I mean, at this point, we’re like, “We’re real. I want the Hershey's candy bar. And related or not, I'm going to beat them two.” And so, we're all bouncing around. And of course, he knew, as soon as we all were looking all the way through mirror, and as we came wending our way through the tunnel, boom, there it was. All three of us were like, “The Golden Gate Bridge.” And he's like, “Yeah, I guess you all get candy bars now.” [audience laughter] It was that perfect moment. 

 

Steve remained in my life, because he was still my uncle technically, [audience laughter] I always referred to him as my uncle by divorce, which was the simplest way to sum up the situation. Even after they split up, he remained a good uncle to me. He would help me out with projects. 

 

With the first year, I decided, back in 2000 to go to Burning Man against all of the wishes of my long time Burner friends who said the thing was over and dead and there was no use going to it at that point, because everything had grown to 45,000 people. I went to Uncle Steve for help, because I had this concept for an art project I wanted to build, and he was the one person who I knew could help me with it. 

 

And so, I drove all the way up to his land in Northern California, and there he was on the end of the router with the Marlboro cigarette hanging from his mouth, helping me, “You're really going to go all the way out there with no electricity and no water, and for what?” I was like, “You got to trust me on this, man. It's going to be special.” Through college, when I needed a place to party, he would let me come to his house and hang out. 

 

But after that first Burning man experience, it was a few months later that I went to the VA Hospital in San Francisco to visit Steve. My cousin, Justin, was in town. Everybody was super somber, because he'd been diagnosed with an extremely late stage of lung cancer. 

He was one of those Marlboro miles collectors that had the Marlboro canoe [audience laughter] and the Marlboro pool table. Anything that you could get, he had collected. 

 

It was late-stage lung cancer. It was three months later that I went up to his land to say goodbye. And it was hard. I mean, here was a man who had been dead and came back. And so, I wrote him a letter, because I was better at communicating that way. I took it and I gave it to him and I couldn't look him in the face. He was shrunk, he was shriveled, he'd been completely reduced. He was just this gaunt skeleton of what he used to be. 

 

I couldn't stand to see him that way. I spent the afternoon at his house and was back having dinner with my mom at a friend's house. And she said, “You know, he feels like you've already written him off, like he's already dead.” I just was so shocked. So, I went back that night. I had to walk a long-- It's a mile. No streetlights. It's all dirt road. Flashing back to my days as a 10-year-old and 11-year-old, worried that bears were going to get me, and he'd already gone to sleep. 

 

As I was walking back, thinking on where I was at my life in that point. I put it out to the universe that the thing that I wanted most was to meet her, that she had to be out there somewhere. I was finally open and willing to have her in my life. And so, the next night, I swear to God, I met the woman who would become the love of my life, Michelle. And 13 years later, we have an eight-year-old boy who believes that there is magic in the world. 

 

Looking back, I've always assigned a lot of regret to the things that I didn't have control of. Like, I always wished that Steve could have met Michelle and seen the ways he'd helped me and seen what a good father I'd become. But more than anything what I regret, is that I couldn't just look him in the face and tell him how much he meant to me when it still mattered.