Family is funny. Sometimes you’re born into it, sometimes you make your own. Sometimes you’re lucky enough to be blessed with a person who you would CHOOSE to have in your life, and they actually ARE your family. I was lucky enough to have my Uncle John (Jack) Marti who was my real uncle and someone I would choose again and again to have in my life.

My first memory of him was when he brought two big red table candles to our house to put on my birthday cake, to wish me a happy second birthday.

I was four.

I stamped my foot and threw a fit, and argued with this strange man all day. He insisted I was two, and I insisted I was four. He told me I wasn’t going to get the present he brought me unless I agreed I was two. I never gave in. I wouldn’t blow out those darn big candles on my chocolate birthday cake either, even though he said I wouldn’t get a piece, and chocolate was my very favorite. (He lied about that too; Mom let me have my birthday cake, but boy did her brother wind me up.)

Yep, that was Uncle Jack. He and my Aunt Micki and Cousin Carrie would come up from California to visit us in Seattle every year. He’d go to play golf and bet on the horses with my dad, and then come back to the house with me and my four siblings and get us going. It was always a battle of wills and I loved every minute of it because I was determined to beat him. I learned how to tease and be teased, I learned how to be a good sport because of my Uncle Jack.

When I first became an author, he was a voracious reader, who read many of my books, and he was one of my biggest fans. Did I still get teased by my Uncle Jack? Hell yes! I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I was lucky to have had a man like him in my life.

Uncle Jack, don’t just rest in peace, you continue to have fun and give ‘em hell.

1933 - 2022