The Story of Me: In Aunts part 3

Alright, the third aunt--the youngest child--is by far the most interesting, and no one in the family would deny it. The best family stories usually center around her, but I can't remember a lot of the details anymore so I'm afraid I can't do her justice. (Above pic: At the bottom in tinted glasses.)

I'll call her Nature, short for Child of Nature. I don't think I have Three Precise Things to say about Nature, but what's not to love about An Eccentric Relative? While I take after my mother quite a bit, my dad has always insisted I remind him of this sister. She's the imaginative one, the dreamer, and the talker. She's one of those relatives you can see after years of absence, and you'll be having a Deep and Interesting conversation within minutes--no small talk.

Nature was the hippie in the family. I don't mean a peace-and-love sort of hippie, or anything trendy; but someone who wants to have a ton of kids, take them out into the bush, and let them run wild. She's also Christian, so she does match the family in that way--except, of course, she was the one who got hooked into Scientology and had to escape from a ship. How many people have Cult Escape stories?

She married a man who seemed to want the same nature-lovin' wild-child lifestyle as she, so they had four children and moved out to the woods. And I mean woods. They lived in a cabin in Bella Coola, which is so remote that even the Hulk ran off there to hide! She would write these letters to her mother on yellow lined paper, with a pencil, and illustrated, full of her adventures; and the letters would get passed around the family.

Unfortunately Le Husband didn't turn out to be such a nature boy after all, so they moved back to the city to divorce, and there she had to stay. I think she sort of feels like she had the dream, she was living the life she wanted, but with the wrong man, so the dream only lasted a few years. But I suppose that's better than what most people achieve.

And she's the sort of person who can drop Jesus into the conversation without self-consciousness. I don't think she's been churched for many a decade, but you sort of imagine her and Jesus wearing matching BFF necklaces.

I have one final memory to share. One of the few times I returned to Edmonton was for my great-grandmother's funeral. I think she was in her 90s when she died, and a Great Dame, so the funeral wasn't too sad, it was a bit of a family reunion.

As usual I'm hazy on the details because of my Edmontonian Detachment, but not long before the funeral it had come out that one of our relatives-by-marriage had molested some children in the family. He was from an older generation, so I get the feeling everyone treated it in a sort of Let's Not Talk About This Manner--or at least, his generation did. I'm sure some younger family members (such as the parent/s of the children) ignored him, or maybe even confronted him, I don't know. But I do remember that Aunt Nature refused to go to the funeral because Molester Guy was going to be there. And I had much respect for that. It shows you another side of Aunt Nature, and a strong family resemblance to her older sister Lipstick. :-)

The Story of Me: In Aunts part 2

The Middle Child

I'm sorry to say I have less stories about the eldest of my dad's younger sisters (the one in the lower right side of the above pic). She had long ago moved to Calgary, so even the short years I spent in Edmonton I didn't see her much. So let's call her Calgary. She was married to Some Guy, I know nothing about him, or even when they divorced. They had no children. When I was around 10 (?) she started dating a Wealthy Older Man and they've been together, unmarried, since. They didn't have kids either, just little dogs.

I suspect I also know less about Calgary because my father didn't know her as well, and maybe because she's the most like my father. Friendly but sort of reserved or private. (And notice how they both got the hell out of Edmonton at an early age?)

If Aunt Calgary is the Patron Saint of something, I wouldn't be privileged enough to know what that is. But let me try to say 3 Things About Her anyway.

1. When I was about 11 or so, and visiting back in Edmonton, I felt like I was at an awkward in-between stage. My twin cousins were old enough to be Interesting to Grown Ups. And my little cousin who was also visiting was Still Little & Cute (though she was, interestingly, the only witness to The Famous Grandma Contre-temps. I'm sure she doesn't remember.) But one day Aunt Calgary was visiting, and I felt like she was the only one who took an interest in me. So for many years I called her My Favourite Aunt.

And she was just generally pretty and warm and interested in children, sort of like my step-mother. When you're an 11 year old girl you just love a Pretty & Interested-in-you Woman. I would imagine she's pretty universally liked amongst my Edmontonian cousins.

2. When in town for my grandmother's wedding I had tea one day with Aunt Calgary. And all I can remember from it was my shock when she expressed some sort of belief that the very high numbers of deaths in foreign (African) countries was just nature's way of culling the species, so what can we do? If I had been old enough to be Marxist, I suppose I would have seen her married-into-wealth as the source of this Malthusian Shpleckiness. I'm sure I tried to talk her out of it, though I don't know what I said.

*Political Aside: I mean, yes, you can see Mother Nature's hand in any death on this planet, but if you're going to use this as a reason for holding a Well-What-Can-We-Do? attitude, then I have to be Out. If it's true what Dando said, that "Natural factors cause crop failures, but humans cause famines" then there's certainly room for human guilt. Not to mention it's not for us to decide Evolution (Natural Selection) is at Work and there's nothing we can do--westerners are the *fittest* or whatever. Evolution happens over millions of years, and there's no saying what's *fit* since we can't predict future changes in our environment. We should instead concentrate on what we think is ethical, or just.

Anyway, I'm not trying to charge my aunt with callousness--it's only a vaguely recalled conversation, and possibly an outgrown opinion. I'm just saying... the memory stayed with me.

3. Several year ago she got a pair of antique earrings framed--one for me, one for one of my cousins--along with a photo of the relative of ours' who owned it (I can never remember who--what generation.) It's totally beautiful, and the only heirloom I own that goes back more than a couple generations. Probably my only regret at not having kids is that I have no one to pass it on to, so I intend to pass it back to one of my cousins' daughters when I'm Oldy.

The Story of Me: In Aunts

I was born in Edmonton, but I wasn't there long. We moved to Winnipeg, moved back to Ed a couple years, and then we were gone for good.

Both my parents were born in Edmonton, so that's where the bulk of my genetic-relatives live, though I rarely see them. Having moved away from relatives at such a young age, I don't have a very strong sense of extended family. I saw my step-mother's family more often growing up (grade 6 onward), but they're French so the language difference always created a little bit of a barrier. They all live in the Townships, so without a car I don't see them often either.

I understand why some people create their own communities around them--I'm certainly closer to my friends than to my extended family. But... with all that said... my genetic families are pretty weird people, and I can't deny being related to them since I've inherited the weirdness. (Understand that weird is a compliment in my books.)

My dad has three sisters and they've all led interesting lives. I'm not very good at the details, but they go something like this...

Eldest Child

I'll call her Lipstick, since she once wrote PIG in lipstick across my dad's stuffed dog. (Every time my dad tells this story she just giggles unapologetically.) She had a teen pregnancy (who was adoped out, but it's happy endings all around because Lipstick and her biological daughter are now friends) and then she had a boy and twin daughters. There's a lot of sad history in here which I won't relate, but my aunt's a survivor and ...plucky.

Here is my deceased grandfather, my still-kicking-it-old-school
grandmother, and their children. The one in the middle,
looking so Sweet and Petite is Aunt Lipstick.
Don't let appearances fool you. She's very street.

I can't speak for what sort of mother she was, but all the same time she's a sort of Patron Saint of Children. I've never heard her speak of her children without FIERCE PROTECTIVE love. Probably the sort of love that drives you up the wall, but can't possibly leave you in doubt to its genuineness. A complete mother bear. I have 3 defining memories of her (and no, Pablo, they don't involve a spoon):

1. When I was 11 I had a sort of contre-temps with my grandmother (my dad's mother.) I didn't speak to her for a year after, and though my mother supported me through it, I never felt like my dad was on my side about it. (To this day I can't figure out where his head was during this... my father's a bit of a sphinx sometimes.) When I was about 14 I was in Edmonton for my grandmother's wedding, and stayed with Aunt Lipstick, and that's when I found out that she'd heard of this whole thing with my grandmother. And had been furious, because apparently the way my grandmother spoke to me, she'd done to her daughters as well. And Most Excellent Aunt Lipstick called her mother up and gave her a talking to.

Can I describe how wonderful this made me feel? To find out that someone from my dad's side of the family had understood and stood up for me? I probably didn't fully forgive my grandmother until I found this out. God bless my Aunt Lipstick--the Patron Saint of Children came through for me.

2. The father of Lipstick's children was a womanizing sort of charmer, who had an affair and left Lipstick for the Affairee. They lived together for years until he got Lou Gherig's (I think) and she dumped him. And guess who helped to care for him? Yes, my aunt. But when he was incapacitated, sitting in that wheelchair and unable to escape her wrath, she finally let him have it. Not even for shit he'd done for her (if I remember this story right) but for shit that had affected her children. That's the Patron Saint again. I was very proud when I heard this story.

3. The last time I saw Aunt Lipstick she was visiting my parents out here in Quebec, and the only conversation I can remember having with her was about her grandchildren. The grandkids have gone through their own share of Parental Troubles, and Aunt Lipstick stands up for them too. The world has got to be a better place because women like this are in it.

So while I'm not very attentive to my Edmonton Family, I'll always love them, in my own Distant Way.