Fifty years ago today, Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space, preceded only by dogs and rockets.

Twenty years ago, in a profoundly less celebrated event, I started learning Russian in a public high school classroom in San Francisco. The first essay I ever translated from our Russian textbooks was a short and roundly positive piece on Gagarin, of course. And so, for me, Russian and Gagarin and Soviets have always been one bundle. He was the best kind of man, and stood above the very bad system that had produced him. Happy anniversary, Yuri. Hope you’re out there in the playing in the cosmos somewhere with that space-dog.

Thanks to Dasha for passing on this lovely little video tone-poem:

My uncle Al

Busy, busy around here, but the overwhelming event of the last week was the birth, after just the right amount of gestation, of my first nephew ever: baby Charlie.

I am now not just a father. I am an uncle.

Becoming an uncle may mean different things to different people. They say some people aren’t close to their siblings, but I can’t say I know what that’s like. My brother and I are quite unlike each other in a few ways, and we’ve had our disagreements, but even in conflict we were close. And we’re certainly close now. And that’s translated onto my relationship, I think, with this unmet neonate mewling into the South Florida steam this morning. His birth is not the birth of my own children. But it feels more like that than I would have imagined.

As an aside about what it means to have a child–today is actually my brother’s birthday. But I’m really not focusing on that at all. The new kid, with a birthday three days before his father, will forevermore overshadow his father’s once-big day. Sigh.

Uncle is, by the way, a kind of a great role. It’s like being a grandparent, but your joints don’t ache. You have no responsibility toward the child–save their physical safety in your presence–but all the advantages of loving and being loved. You get to be a character actor in the child’s life, which itself seems satisfying: I’m thinking of those rich, brief parts Paul Giamatti gets to play.

Part of my joy at this new assignment must also be due to my remarkable luck with my own uncles. They include the ones I grew up with: the joke-telling, song-singing, bird-flipping lawyer from San Francisco; the hard-living, sweet-hearted goatherd from Jersey by way of Southcentral France. Later additions include a glacier-climbing rock drummer from Madrid who is just a few years older than me, and a gentle Rabbi who studies Kabbalah and mentors inmates. They can all be, at times, either friend or family. And, importantly, they present alternative visions of manhood, offered without judgment, to compare and contrast with your father.

There is a reason, I think, why the Spaniards call each other tio the way Conchs call each other bubba. It’s a comfort role, being an uncle. I am incredibly excited about it.

And yet, in my first reality-check about the job, I have realized that I am booked for so much work and travel and work-travel that I won’t even be able to visit this sweet boy for at least another month. Meanwhile, I may have to fire up UncleWagon.com just to keep track of my emotions about the whole thing.

Mazel tov, brother. And, of course, happy birthday.