Mu Uncle Pete at 105, an Italian Perennial
My uncle Peter is seated peacefully in a lounge chair in a suburban Boston backyard. Feeling the sun warming his face, a gentle spring breeze against his skin and the call of a nearby goldfinch, he closes his eyes as he takes it all in. He is a poster boy for mindfulness, a smiling little Italian Buddha.
In his face I see my father — his brother, long gone — and my grandfather, too, an even more distant memory; and even reflections of myself, and it gives me a kind of comfort. As I enter my own senior status, this still-engaging, story-telling uncle who turns 105 this month, can make me feel, just by his continual presence, like a kid again.
Among the hanging geraniums and a sweep of daylilies, he’s become a rare perennial himself. After nearly two years of pandemic confinement, Peter (more often “Pete”) was greeting visitors again, sharing family stories of growing up in Waltham, the rambunctious middle child of seven, and reminiscing about the time he was in a bomb-disposal unit in World War II.
He’s happy enough to be here, though he still misses bowling, which he did until his second century. He complains of having to turn in his leased Toyota RAV4, which he got when he turned 100. He’s quick to show off his Massachusetts driver’s license which he renewed when he was 101— and which is still good through 2023.
At least he got to ride in a convertible last fall when he — a former soldier who was at Normandy and later witnessed the horrors of concentration camps — was grand marshal in Waltham’s Veterans Day parade, basking in the celebrity of the amazingly aged.
He lives at the home of his sister, Philomena, where he has lived in the basement apartment since his wife died more than 20 years ago. My aunt Phil is 95 and her husband, Savio, died last year at the age of 103. But it’s a comparatively young and active household with daughters, sons, grandchildren and assorted friends and relatives coming and going, usually settling in the kitchen or, on a brilliant day like today, in the backyard.
I ask him what age he would return to if he could. He takes a long, thoughtful pause and then says definitively, “70.” He says that’s the age before physical ailments start making desires…
