Wintry Day Makes Them Cry Uncle

She disappeared around 7 a.m., my wife of 16 years, slipping into her jeans and sweater, then pulling the covers over the children and heading off to the mall or the outlet store, wherever women are running off to these days.

“Where’s Mom going?” the little girl asks.

“Shopping,” I say.

And they roll over and listen to the rain on the roof, warmed by the very thought that as they lie in their beds this cool morning, their mother is off shopping for Christmas, maybe even shopping for them.

“When will she be back?” the boy asks.

“Maybe never,” I say.

“She better be back by lunch,” the boy says.

“Yeah, Dad. She better be back by lunch,” the little girl says.

Outside, the rain is pounding down. It’s not a gentle rain like L.A. had a few weeks ago, but a full-throttle rain, washing the roofs and the trees, giving this town a well-deserved bath. Up in the mountains, it’s probably snowing.

All in all, it makes for a good winter weekend, wet and cool, the kind that puts even difficult people like these into the holiday spirit.

“I’ll make breakfast,” I say, shuffling to the kitchen, where the windows are steamy even before I start.

“Thanks for the warning,” my lovely and patient older daughter says.

Like a lot of dads, I’m a pretty good cook. I cook the way Bill Murray cooked in “Stripes,” chasing people around the kitchen with the spatula for about 15 minutes, thwacking them on the backside before finally getting down to business. A lot of the great chefs of Europe warm up the very same way.

“What’ll it be today?” I ask as I chase the boy around the kitchen.

“Pancakes!” the boy yells, which is fortunate, because pancakes and chili are the only two breakfast dishes I know, aside from cold pizza, which we just had yesterday.

“You don’t want chili?” I ask.

“Not today,” says the boy.

“OK, then it’s pancakes,” I say.

At the breakfast table sits their Uncle Jack, in for the Thanksgiving weekend and maybe longer--as long as he likes really, though he never stays for more than a month or two.

Almost everybody has an Uncle Jack, the different uncle, the one with 12 years of college and no visible means of support, the one with the funny stories and the best jokes, who knows all the answers on “Jeopardy” but hasn’t held a steady job in, like, his entire life.

There are the relatives you’re born with. Then there are the relatives you adopt, old friends who take on the status of actual family. Then there is Uncle Jack.

“Are you really our uncle?” the little red-haired girl asks over and over.

“Sure,” Jack says.

“I thought so,” the little girl says.

Of all the uncles, he is the one they see most often, the one they hear about the most, the one who always calls.

“Why do you guys tell those same stories?” the boy always asks after a long phone call from Uncle Jack.

“Yeah, Dad, don’t those college stories get boring,” my older daughter says, “like the 100th time or so?”

“No, they get better,” I say.

Eventually, the kids will have old college friends, too, friends with whom the stories improve with time. Stories of spring breaks and bad dates and college parties that lasted till 7 in the morning. Friends who become part of the family. Friends who are so adept and entertaining that they seem half real and half fiction.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” the boy asks, as his Uncle Jack helps him cut a piece of poster board for a book report.

“Kindergarten,” Uncle Jack says.

According to Uncle Jack, he had 30 years of kindergarten. Most people rush through kindergarten in a year or two, then move on. But not Uncle Jack.

From what he says, he was in kindergarten for decades, changing his field of study as his interests grew. One year he’d concentrate on cutting triangles. The next year, he’d focus on eating paste.

“A lot of people laughed when I spent 30 years in kindergarten,” Jack says. “They’re not laughing now.”

The kids watch him cut the poster board, folding it just right, then slicing it delicately with a kitchen knife. It’s the kind of stuff only government spies or people with 12 years of college and 30 years of kindergarten would know how to do.

When he is done cutting, they all exhale, then look around brightly, proud that they know someone with this kind of skill. If their mom returns, she will hear all about it.

“You know how to make snowflakes?” the little red-haired girl asks.

“Dumb question,” says Uncle Jack.

“Yeah, dumb question,” says her brother, who’s never known another guy quite like Uncle Jack, a guy who’s 12 feet tall but not a movie star. A hero come to life.

“Are you really our uncle?” the little girl asks.

“Sure,” Jack says.

“I thought so,” the little girl says.

Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.