I have an aunt that just got relief from Alzheimer's. She just passed.

I'm going to miss her.

I'm the oldest of the generation and she was 13 when I was born. I guess she was excited because nothing gets a young girl as excited as a new baby. I suppose it is a maternal thing.

So my Aunt baby sat me, fed me and changed my diapers and did what the kid sisters of new first time mothers do. She was great and probably fawned all over me.

I do remember her making me chocolate milk sometimes when my mother wasn't looking when I got a bit older.

A few years later I had a great aunt the was a retired old maid school teacher. I think she retired before World War One. She actually should have retired before World War One. She was a frumpy old pain in the ass. 

When she annoyed me I would tell her some wild tale or another about having a fight at school and she'd go straight to my mother who would say, "Oh, he did not!"

While she was running over to tell my mother I would bolt and make my escape. I'd head straight to the woods until it was time to eat.

This went on for quite a while and even my dad thought it was funny. Of course, my mother got tired of it. She asked my father to get me to stop and much to the credit of the old man he evaded the issue as best he could because he was smart.

He knew better than to give an order that would not be obeyed. He knew that if I stopped telling the old Aunt wild tales I would simply do something else. Besides, he knew I only did it to her to get rid of her when she was being an old frump which was most of the time.

Anyway, we were visiting Grandma's and my mother asked her kid sister who was probably in her early 20s by now to give me a talk and tell me to leave the old aunt alone.

Now my aunt thought what I was doing was funny. Still, she decided to help her big sister out by giving me a talking-to about how I ought to stop telling the old great aunt about stabbing classmates, stealing projectors or letting the air out of all the tires in the teacher's parking lot.

It didn't really go as planned because she couldn't keep a straight face. The whole thing came off more like the Monte Python skit about how ignorance is nothing to laugh at. Then she asked me if I really told her I had stabbed a classmate. I told her I did and she laughed at her mental picture of the old great aunt running off to tell my mom.

She reported to my mom she'd try again later.

A couple of hours later she sat me down and started to give me a straight faced lecture on the matter and she became the second person I ever truly communicated with wordlessly. The first was my father. 

She told me that I should yada yada yada and so on but I knew exactly what she was telling me was complete bullshit. In fact the sterner the lecture the more I knew it was simply canned rhetoric.

She was in complete control and gave a damned good serious lecture to me. My mother in the next room heard it and out of the corner of my eye I saw my mother looked pleased.

During the lecture I looked into her eyes and we shared the look during the lecture. It was a very unspoken thing and the look told me that she was simply doing her big sister a favor by giving me a lecture. She thought that what I was doing to escape the clutches of the dreaded great aunt was pretty damned funny.

Later my Aunt became my counselor of sorts in all matters of the family tree. She helped me figure out why somebody was the way they were. She knew it all cold. This is incredible when you think of all of the ins and outs of an Irish family tree.

She was also great at family gatherings, too. More than once she did something to facilitate my escape from the dreaded Great Aunt. She'd do something like interrupt the two of us and ask me to get something out of the car or some other thing and with a certain smirk I would know I was not really expected to return with it.

Later on before I went into the army she laughed and told me to expect fruitcakes from the Great Aunt.

Sure enough she was right. As soon as I got out of basic the damned things started arriving on a regular basis. A few years later I remember telling my aunt about how I got the old woman to stop sending the damned things. It is the basis of another story I have already told. Here is is. It's hot, just click it.

Anyway, after I got out of the service I visited her and my uncle. 

When she saw me at the door her face lit up and practically the first thing she asked me while laughing was if I really had sent a letter to the Great Aunt telling her I was on a secret mission. I remember her howling gleefully when I said I had.

She's gone now and I miss her.





To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY