About my soul father, Michael Joseph Ryan.
In 1914 he turned fourteen, small for his age, man of the house, responsible for mother, sisters and farm.
One day he got tangled up in a coil of barbed-wire fence too big for him, shredding his skin. That night his sister Margaret pressed a sock full of money into his hand. “Get yourself to America, before this place kills you.”
In America he worked a range of factory jobs. He laid out a union snitch with a two by four, escaping a murder trial when the man woke up from his coma. He was known for his temper but only showed it to me when I turned down a piece of liver. He had known real hunger. He never raised a hand to me or my sisters.
I don’t know much about his first marriage. He was widowed, and his daughter Margaret died of cancer. His second marriage might have been chaste. His wife Mary also had a previous marriage, possibly annulled, maybe divorced. Aunt Mary was very devout, attending Mass daily; Uncle Mike questioned transubstantiation, pissing off his wife no end.
He retired from factory work; Aunt Mary and he were hired by my father to look after the house, property and children of our broken home. We were well-loved. Money didn’t buy that. It was their nature. They saw us through very hard times.
I laid claim to his last name: “My name is Roy Welwood Jones Ryan, and I talk with a ‘grogue’ like my Uncle Mike.” I did my best to adopt the Limerick lilt. He took me everywhere. The bartender served me ginger ale while Uncle Mike had a glass of beer. Uncle Mike used to drink heavily, but I never saw him do so. Aunt Mary would get on his case when he had a glass. “That beer will be the death of you!” Once he told her that cake would be the death of her. She lived to a hundred and one. Mike not so long; he got dementia.
Even with dementia he had a wicked sense of humor. He dumped a bowl of spaghetti on his head and laughed while Aunt Mary cleaned him up. Bless her, she laughed too.
He told me he never graduated third grade so I drew him a diploma complete with a drawing of him smoking his pipe. He was smart as anything, loved to read. I suspect he got past third grade (it wouldn’t have been the first tall tale he told) but when he was working the farm he couldn’t have had much time for school.
After the boys in the locker room called me “dog penis”, he told me how his mother had turned down the doctor when he offered to circumcise him for “hygienic purposes”. “No, Doctor, I don’t think so. He’ll just have to wear it off, the way his father did.” Uncle Mike sowed pride where there had been shame. (I never did manage to “wear it off”, not for lack of trying.)
When I was little, picking blackberries with him, he made me go up the hill, away from the bear and her cub, while he waited at the bottom of the hill until I was safe.
Salt of the earth. He brought savor to our lives when we most needed it.
~ Wry Welwood (Ryan)
7th of October 2021
Written in response to J.D. Harms’ prompt: “…write a prose poem as a portrait of someone you know/knew, living or dead.” This prompt brought words from my heart that had been waiting a long time.