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. :-)