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.