Not finding UJ was pretty disappointing. For one thing, it's been over a decade since I last spoke to him. Getting back in touch would be great, no matter how conservative and suburban he's probably become. And I'm also intrigued because he's changed so much over his now 50-plus years on the mothership. The son of a Slovak couple and brother of 7-9 kids � the family lived in downtown Polskitown (name changed to protect innocent parties) in a house with dirt floors � he survived life stages as a young community leader, acid-dealing college kid, then clean college kid, and dutiful employee to end up as a successful ladder-climbing yuppie with management skills. He's the only full-fledged, 80s-made yuppie I've ever known, really, because that kind of person usually wants nothing to do with my or my family's pierogie-munching kind. Since he was married to my aunt, and I was a toddler, I guess he made an exception in my case.

UJ's responsible for some of my favorite and/or formative childhood moments: Learning about volcanoes and "Mother Nature," disco dancing; overcoming my fear and distrust of men with mustaches (he couldn't kick my fear and distrust of men in general, unfortunately); eating fried trout he'd caught on Lake Erie with the zucchini he and Aunt R had grown at their rented house, situated on10 acres in Greensburg, Pa.; going to visit their neighbor, Duff, an honorary member of the One of the Nicest Men Ever Born Club; listening to old Rod Stewart records when they weren't old yet. According to my mom, during Easter dinner 1979 (I was three) I stuck my face in my mashed potatoes after UJ, who sat beside me, looked at me and smiled. He was the smartest guy I knew at the time, or so the rest of the family gushed, and he intimidated me. But he never scared me; he was too loving to inspire fear.

He and Aunt R made a great couple. They were young and childless and cosmopolitan. They went to Pittsburgh � the Big City � all the time, to dine at swank restaurants where the appetizers cost more than the standard three-way meal for my parents and me. At the time, Aunt R worked at The Limited � the Most Glamourous Store at Westmoreland Mall � and was doing some modelling on the side. She even went to D.C. once for a photo gig � I think it involved hosiery advertisement. Their house was large but not pretentious; it fit them and vice versa. Visits were the best; they had a great stereo system with enormous speakers and they'd always dance with me, showing me the dip and other exciting moves and playing their records.

It all fell apart when they moved to another house closer to the city. That's when the extramarital affairs happened, and the nasty papers were filed. I think I learned what "divorce" really meant from my third-grade teacher, who had to explain it to me. If my parents had previously explained it, it hadn't sunk in. Aunt R moved to a trailer park, and UJ moved to western New York.

After the split, UJ continued visiting my parents and I like nothing had ever happened. We all loved him and he remained welcome in our home, even though (rumor has it) he cheated first. That irritated my mother's parents, but everything does so we overlooked it. Besides, they weren't speaking to us at the time anyway due to one of their ritualistic two-year mood swings. In the years after his move to New York I remember getting glasses for the first time, making all A's and earning my nerd stripes, getting sick a lot. These were things we'd discuss in our letters, which he wrote on yellow legal pads and I in pencil.

One day the inevitable happened: UJ found a new wife. She was from the South, which meant that from her first visit my mother didn't like her. Neither did my Dad and I, because this woman talked through her nose and she was mean to her twin daughters. They were cute and well-behaved, but she slapped them anyway. UJ didn't protest. A new side of him was emerging.

When I was 10, my parents and I went to visit UJ and family at their new house in a suburb of "Bourgeoisaqua." We had just driven in from Wildwood, N.J., at the time The Best Vacation Spot in the Universe. I was under the weather because during a shower I'd slipped and split my chin, an accident that required a tetanus shot (and nearly a distemper shot for my mother, who you can always count on for a hearty hyperventilating fit). I was running a fever but nevertheless excited to be in New York for the first time with my idol, the approaching-graduation, promotion-earning UJ. By then, however, the paths of our families had already diverged, and the distance was growing.

My only memories of that vacation: Lying on the couch with a fever; thinking how weird it was that the couch, a scratchy thing with pictures of water wheels on the cushions, had once sat in a house that UJ had occupied in another state, with another wife; turning away a plate of biscuits with sausage gravy; hearing my mother complain about "sausage gravy � what the hell is that?"; thanking God that UJ's wife was not my mother; feeling sorry for the cute little girls, my only cousins; and trying to eat the worst-tasting hot dog of my entire life at this pier-type place that served as one of the town's only attractions. More confounding, however, was my relief that UJ wasn't my dad, for he had become a strict disciplinarian who condescended to his stepdaughters in a way I'd never have imagined. He wasn't like that when he was married to my aunt. After a weekend of fun mixed with awkward moments, mom and dad and I piled up in the silver Caravan and made the trek down 219 past the Corning Glassware factory in Corning and the Zippo factory in Bradford towards home.

Despite the weird moments, UJ and my family stayed in touch. They visited several Christmases in a row, and we were heartened to see that UJ's wife was loosening up and slapping the twins a little less frequently. This was obviously before the email era, so mostly we communicated by letter and Hallmark card. A couple times the twins stayed at our house and for a night I'd feel like I had sisters. They were really nice, those girls.

In 1992 I was 16 and anxious to travel beyond the Tri-State area (whichever three states you choose, as long as they border PA, will work). In August, just before the start of my senior year, I told my parents I wanted to go to Chicagoland and visit UJ. In the time since my family's visit to his NY house, UJ's company had moved him to a bigger, better, more prestigious location as reward for his hard work, and I had hoped to take advantage of that � and see how he was doing. They let me go, and on a warm night I boarded the Amtrak and headed west.

Within a year I made another unexpected visit to Chicago as a member of the Art Club at school. More firsts: First walk through a Chinatown, first visit to a Niketown, first view of a naked male model ... the world was starting to become more eclectic. And I was going to college in the fall, where it would be okay to dress like a boy and maybe even find a boy who liked that sort of thing. Most of the trip I spent walking around separated from the crowd, initiating a pattern that has lasted through the present. In the Class of '93 yearbook photo commemmorating the trip, the whole art club is smiling for the camera except for me. I was standing in the front row, but looking to the left. Probably didn't hear the picture-taker say "ready," but it's more romantic to think I was being a rebel girl.

Since I was in town, I called up UJ to see if he'd like to see me. He did, and so we met downtown and went to Greektown. And that was the last time I saw him. But not only that ��it was also the last time I talked to him. Not sure why, but I think it had something to do with my new, Nirvana-influenced sense of humor, because when I'd say something that was funny to me, UJ and Wife would pause in that stilted "oh ... ah-hah" way, and look down at their spanokopita and push the conversation back towards school and other neutral topics. Literate folks call this "cognitive dissonance"; I call it "yuppies with sticks up their ..." Whatever it was, it left me with the impression that an irreversible schism had taken place, and I did not know how to fix it. I wanted our relationship to be just like it had been years previously, when UJ was teaching me how to be sarcastic and abrasive. But I left dinner that night thinking that if I were his daughter instead of the twins, he'd tell me to dress like a girl and major in business.

If we talked today, how would the conversation go? Would he tell me I was just a dumb kid who didn't understand the free market, or has he figured out that the invisible hand waves its middle finger at everyone but a tiny elite? Does he still work at a corporation?

And why can't I find him? Did he change his name? It's hard for me to believe that he didn't become a big cheese at the corporation, because he was motivated and determined. I guess he was driven by his own past, days of dirt floors and crooked teeth of his Slavic siblings. Somehow, the suburbs seemed better.

But what if the suburbs were better-suited for him? What if he really does understand something that the rest of us didn't figure out, because we were too busy wanting him to be something he wasn't? It's hard to say, but as I write this I wish he were around to tell me.