Uncle Cantor's Lamp

That lamp sitting on my desk reminds me of Uncle Cantor. He either gave it to me, like he was always giving me things every time I saw him, or it found its way to my house after he died, leaving a houseful of stuff that we didn't really want to give to the Salvation Army.

I don't know where he got the lamp. Maybe Matilda, his older sister, gave it to him. She spent six years in Japan back in the '70s. The base of it is red, with cartoonish images of geisha women strolling through a garden. They're not very expertly drawn, and they look kind of angry now that I'm really looking at them, but I've always liked the lamp because it reminds me of Uncle Cantor.

I'm not really sure why we called him Uncle Cantor. I'm thinking it has something to do with Cantors in the Jewish temple, but that really doesn't make sense. He was Italian and Catholic. His given name was Ettore, a classy name that he should have used more. Cantor suited him though. Basic and unpretentious. Some people also called him Joe. I can't figure that one out either. Perhaps serendipidously, my mother-in-law's maiden name was also Cantor. So it seemed fitting that our oldest son should have Cantor as his middle name.

A few facts about Uncle Cantor. He was short. Five foot three, maybe? He was my favorite uncle because he was always laughing or dancing, and when he was younger he had these huge biceps that he'd flex at the dinner table while we neices and nephews tried to squeeze them. After I graduated from law school, I lived with him and his beautiful wife Nancy for two months as I studied for the bar exam. They doted on me, both of them. Nancy made me meals, emptied my trash can, asked about my love life, showed me the correct way to iron a dress. If I wasn't back by 5:30 after my class, one of them would be standing in the driveway waiting, as if their mere expectation that I should be materializing any moment would make it so.

He loved my husband (who doesn't?) and liked to put him to work moving furniture around whenever we visited. He used to tell stories about cooking for a thousand men in Persia during WWII. He was always in a good mood and seemed to let any troubles just roll off his back. After I got married, he'd visit us at our first house and always brought a case of something or other he found in the Strip district. Animal crackers. Pretzels. Canned peaches. Flowers. When his wife died of lung cancer the month before my wedding, he gave me an antique hutch that he said she loved. "What do I need it now for?" I remember him saying.

When he was a widower, he never seemed to lack dates. He frequented the Moose Lodge on Saturday nights, and the tale I heard was there was always a line of widows waiting to dance with him. At a wedding once I remember him standing on the dancefloor snapping his fingers, admiring the figure of his wife as she danced around him.

I never asked him why he didn't have children of his own. He would have made a great father. My kids got to know him a little, but Uncle Cantor died when my oldest was just seven, and my youngest wasn't yet born.

So anyway, there on my desk the lamp sits. It doesn't go with anything, and it's too tall for the small space it occupies. But I like having it there anyway.