Walsh Family Universe V2

"Your Uncle Nate's coming to visit next weekend," Dad announced at dinner the Tuesday after Ash's suspension ended. "He'll be here Friday night through Sunday. I thought we could take Noam camping—just us guys."

Ash's fork stopped halfway to his mouth.

Uncle Nate. Dad's older brother. Career military, stationed at some base in North Carolina. The uncle who'd always looked at Ash—the previous Ash—with barely concealed disapproval.

"Cool," Ash managed, trying to keep his voice neutral.

"You remember Uncle Nate, right?" Mom asked carefully.

Ash remembered. Remembered the last time Nate had visited, when Ash was twenty-two and had shown up to a family dinner with freshly dyed purple hair, multiple new piercings, and a girlfriend who Nate had pointedly refused to acknowledge as anything other than "your friend."

Remembered Nate's comments about "kids these days" and "no discipline" and "what happened to traditional values."

Remembered the argument at that same dinner when Nate had made some comment about "lifestyle choices" and Ash had told him exactly where he could shove his opinions.

They hadn't spoken after that. Nate had left early, and Ash had felt no guilt whatsoever about it.

"Yeah," Ash said quietly. "I remember Uncle Nate."

Dad and Mom exchanged a glance. They knew. Of course they knew. They'd been there for all of it.

"He knows about your... situation," Dad said carefully. "We told him when it happened. He's looking forward to meeting Noam."

Meeting Noam. As if Ash and Noam were different people.

Maybe to Nate, they were.

Friday evening, Ash was doing homework at the kitchen table when he heard the rumble of a truck in the driveway. Through the window, he watched a man unfold himself from a pickup—tall, broad-shouldered, buzz cut, exactly how Ash remembered him.

Uncle Nate grabbed a duffel bag from the truck bed and headed for the door.

"Nate!" Dad's voice from the entryway, warm and genuinely happy. "Good to see you, man."

"Patrick. Good to be here." Nate's voice was deeper than Dad's, with that military crispness to it.

Ash stayed at the table, pencil moving across his math homework, trying to look absorbed in his work.

"Noam, come say hi to your uncle," Mom called.

No avoiding it then.

Ash set down his pencil and walked to the entryway. Nate was there in jeans and a plain gray t-shirt, looking exactly like he always had—solid, intimidating, the kind of presence that took up space.

Their eyes met.

For a moment, Ash saw recognition there. Nate knew. Knew that behind the nine-year-old face was the same person he'd argued with at that dinner. The same person he'd disapproved of for years.

"Hey, Noam," Nate said, his voice carefully neutral. "Good to see you, buddy."

Buddy. He'd never called Ash that before.

"Hi, Uncle Nate," Ash said, keeping his voice in that kid register. "When did you get in?"

"Just now. Long drive from North Carolina." Nate set his duffel down. "Your dad tells me you play baseball?"

"Yeah. Shortstop."

"Good position. Requires quick thinking." Nate's eyes were studying him—not unkindly, but intensely. Like he was trying to reconcile what he was seeing with what he remembered. "You looking forward to camping this weekend?"

"Yeah, should be fun."

"Good." Nate nodded once, like that settled something. "Why don't you finish your homework? I need to talk to your dad and mom about the trip."

Ash retreated gratefully back to the kitchen table. Through the doorway, he could hear the adults' voices—too low to make out words, but the tone was serious. Discussing him, probably. Discussing the situation.

Discussing how to handle a camping trip with a nine-year-old who used to be an adult Nate had openly disliked.

That night at dinner, Nate kept looking at him. Not staring, exactly, but observing. Watching how Ash ate, how he talked, how he interacted with Mom and Dad.

"So you're in fourth grade?" Nate asked.

"Yeah. Mrs. Anderson's class."

"How's that going? You like school?"

Ash shrugged. "It's okay. Reading and history are good. Math is boring because they make us show all our work even for easy problems."

"Discipline," Nate said. "Following procedures even when you think you know better. That's important."

There it was. That tone. The same one he'd used with Ash-before, lecturing about structure and discipline and following rules.

Ash felt his jaw tighten but kept his voice level. "Yeah, I guess."

"Got into a fight last week though," Dad interjected, his tone deliberately light. "Suspended and everything."

Nate's eyebrows rose. "That so? What happened?"

"Some kid was picking on me and my friends," Ash said. "He shoved me, I shoved back."

"And?"

"And we fought. I got suspended."

Nate studied him for a long moment. "Did you win?"

"Nate," Mom said warningly.

"It's a valid question, Shannon. If you're going to get in a fight, you'd better be prepared to finish it." Nate looked back at Ash. "So did you?"

Ash thought about it. "We both got pulled apart before anyone really won. But I held my own."

Something shifted in Nate's expression. Not quite approval, but... something. "Good. Kid needs to learn that actions have consequences. Better you teach him that than let him think he can push people around."

"We don't condone fighting," Mom said firmly. "Noam knows that. He's grounded and served detention all week."

"Good. Consequences matter." Nate nodded. "But so does standing up for yourself."

After dinner, Ash helped clear the table—a recent rule, now that he was nine—then disappeared upstairs to shower and start homework.

He could hear snippets of their conversation—Nate asking about the "program," Dad explaining how things worked, Mom talking about school and sports and adjustment.

"He seems... different," Nate said, his voice carrying into the kitchen.

"He is different," Dad replied. "It's complicated."

"But he's still..." Nate paused, seeming to search for words. "He's still in there, right? The same... person?"

"Yes and no," Mom said. "He has all the same memories, the same consciousness. But he's also genuinely nine years old now. It's both."

"That's..." Nate trailed off. "Christ, that's complicated."

"Yeah," Dad agreed. "It is."

Saturday morning at 7 AM, Dad's SUV was packed with camping gear. Tent, sleeping bags, cooler full of food, fishing rods, a small axe for firewood.

"Ready?" Dad asked, tossing Ash a fleece jacket.

"Ready," Ash said, trying to inject some enthusiasm into his voice.

The campground was two hours north, in state forest land. Nate sat in the passenger seat, Dad driving, Ash in the back. They listened to classic rock—Led Zeppelin, The Who, stuff Dad and Nate had grown up with.

"Remember when we went camping up at Lake Superior?" Nate asked Dad. "You were what, twelve? And you convinced yourself you saw a bear?"

"It was a bear!" Dad protested, laughing. "At least, it could have been a bear."

"It was a raccoon, Patrick. A very large, very angry raccoon."

They swapped stories from their childhood—camping trips, fishing disasters, the time young Patrick had fallen in the lake and ruined Dad's (their dad's) expensive camera.

Ash listened, getting a glimpse of his father as a kid, of Nate as the protective older brother. It was strange seeing them like this—relaxed, joking, the military stiffness gone from Nate's shoulders.

At the campground, they set up their tent together. Nate clearly had experience—his movements were efficient and practiced. He showed Ash how to stake the tent properly, how to set up the rain fly, where to put gear so it wouldn't get wet if it stormed.

"You ever been camping before?" Nate asked.

Ash had been camping once, years ago, with Jordan and some other friends. They'd gotten drunk, forgotten half their gear, and spent the night cold and miserable before giving up and driving home early.

But Noam had never been camping.

"No, first time," Ash said.

"Good. Every boy should learn how to camp properly." Nate handed him a stake. "Here, you try this corner. Make sure it's tight."

They spent the afternoon hiking—a three-mile trail loop that wound through pine forest and along a creek. Nate set a decent pace, not too fast for Ash's shorter legs but not babying him either.

"How's baseball going?" Nate asked as they walked. "Your dad said you made all-stars."

"Yeah, this year. We had a good season."

"You like it? Playing competitively?"

"I love it," Ash said, and realized it was true. "It's... I'm good at it. Not because I'm smart or because I know more than other kids. Just because I work hard and I'm good at reading the game."

"That matters," Nate said. "Natural talent only gets you so far. Work ethic is what makes the difference."

They walked in silence for a bit, the only sounds their footsteps and birds in the trees.

Then Nate said, "I want to apologize."

Ash looked up at him, surprised.

"For before," Nate continued, his eyes on the trail ahead. "When you were... when you were Ash. I was a judgmental asshole. Said things I shouldn't have said, treated you like your choices were somehow an insult to me."

Ash didn't know what to say.

"Your mom and dad told me what happened. The overdose, the conservatorship, the program." Nate's voice was steady but there was something underneath it. "And I keep thinking... you were twenty-four. You were struggling. You were trying to figure out who you were. And I made that harder instead of easier."

"Uncle Nate—"

"Let me finish." Nate stopped walking, turned to face him. "I don't know how this works. Don't know if you remember what I said, how I acted. But if you do... I'm sorry. You didn't deserve that. You deserved family who supported you, not judged you."

Ash swallowed hard. "I remember."

"I figured you might." Nate resumed walking. "So I'm apologizing now, even if it's too late. Even if you're nine years old and I'm talking to you like you're an adult. Because you are and you aren't, and that's confusing as hell, but you're still family."

They walked for another few minutes in silence. Ash's mind was racing. Of all the things he'd expected from this trip, a genuine apology from Uncle Nate wasn't one of them.

"It's okay," Ash finally said. "I wasn't exactly easy to deal with either."

"You were twenty-four and figuring yourself out. That's not 'difficult,' that's normal." Nate shook his head. "I should have been better."

"Well," Ash said carefully, "you're being better now."

Nate glanced down at him, something softening in his expression. "Trying to be."

That evening, they built a fire and cooked hot dogs and beans. Nate showed Ash how to whittle a stick for roasting marshmallows, how to position the marshmallow in the flames for perfect golden-brown without catching fire.

"Your dad was terrible at this," Nate said, gesturing to Dad's charred marshmallow. "Still is, apparently."

"Some of us like them crispy," Dad protested.

"That's not crispy, that's incinerated."

They told more stories as darkness fell. Dad and Nate reminiscing about their childhood, their own father who'd died when Dad was in college. Nate's military training, the places he'd been stationed.

"You ever think about joining the military?" Nate asked Ash at one point.

"I don't know," Ash said honestly. "I've got nine years before I have to think about that stuff."

"True enough." Nate poked the fire with a stick. "But if you ever want to talk about it, I'm around. Well, a phone call away at least."

After Dad went to the tent to "get something" (probably to give them space), Nate and Ash sat by the fire alone.

"Can I ask you something?" Nate said.

"Sure."

"What's it like? Being... both?"

Ash considered the question. "Weird. Sometimes I feel like I'm thirty-one pretending to be nine. Sometimes I feel like I'm nine and the thirty-one part is just background noise. Most of the time it's both at once."

"That sounds exhausting."

"Sometimes it is." Ash poked at the fire with his own stick. "But also... this is my life now. I can't change it. So I just... live it."

"That's mature," Nate said. Then laughed. "I guess that's not surprising."

"I'm working on the nine-year-old parts too," Ash admitted. "Getting in fights over stupid stuff. Playing with my friends. Actually caring about baseball and swimming. It's not all just me going through the motions."

"Good," Nate said firmly. "That's good. You should get to be a kid. Even if you weren't one before, you are one now. Take advantage of it."

"That's what Mom and Dad say."

"They're right." Nate was quiet for a moment. "Look, I know we didn't get along before. I know I was part of why you felt like you had to hide parts of yourself. But this time around... I want to do better. Want to be the uncle you deserve."

Ash felt something tighten in his chest. "Okay."

"Okay." Nate nodded. "So here's what I'm thinking. I'm stationed in North Carolina, that's not changing. But I get leave a few times a year. When I visit, we do this—camping, fishing, guy stuff. I teach you what I know, you teach me about... I don't know, whatever nine-year-olds are into these days."

"Baseball and video games, mostly."

"See? I'm already learning." Nate smiled—a real smile, reaching his eyes. "And if you ever want to talk about the complicated stuff—the both-ages-at-once stuff—I'm here for that too. No judgment."

"Thanks, Uncle Nate."

"Don't thank me yet. I'm going to make you clean all the fish we catch tomorrow."

They sat in comfortable silence, watching the fire burn down to embers. Dad eventually emerged from the tent with blankets, and the three of them settled in around the fire, talking quietly about nothing important—sports, weather, whether they'd see any wildlife.

Later, in the tent, Ash lay in his sleeping bag between Dad and Nate, listening to Dad's soft snoring and the night sounds outside.

Uncle Nate had apologized. Had actually, genuinely apologized for years of judgment and disapproval.

Had asked what it was like being both ages.

Had offered to be better.

"My name is Ash," Ash whispered so quietly that even if Nate or Dad were awake, they couldn't hear. "I'm thirty-one years old. I'm nine years old. Today my uncle apologized for not accepting me before. And somehow that made more of a difference than I expected."

He'd come into this weekend dreading every moment. Expecting the same old Nate—judgmental, rigid, uncomfortable with anything that didn't fit his worldview.

But people could change. Could grow. Could look at their past behavior and decide to do better.

Maybe even Uncle Nate.

Outside, an owl hooted. The fire crackled as it died down. Dad muttered something in his sleep.

And Ash fell asleep feeling something he hadn't expected to feel this weekend.

Safe.

Not just physically safe in a tent with his dad and uncle.

But emotionally safe. Accepted. Given space to be both who he was and who he was becoming.

Four thousand, nine hundred and ninety-five days to go.

But this weekend, he'd gotten his uncle back.

A different version maybe—softer, more accepting, willing to apologize and try again.

But family nonetheless.

And that was worth more than he'd realized.