Aunts (April A2Z ~ Misty Memories)

Aunties and Grandma

Welcome to my April A2Z posts! This time, I am officially signed up on the challenge sheet and will be visiting other bloggers on the list. My theme is "misty memories," which will include a bunch of rambling about old stuff in my life, and hopefully some of it will be accurate, but if not, there's no one around to contradict me. Today we begin with A for Aunts.

When I lived back East, decades ago, I thought I had several aunts. It turned out, however, that they were technically my great-aunts, sisters of my paternal grandmother, Louise. I also had regular aunts, my mother's sisters, but I hardly saw them. My mother had had a falling out with her family in Ohio before moving to New York, and it wouldn't be for many more years until she was in semi-regular contact again. So, as a little kid, I really only knew of my father's relatives. All these sisters were much older than Grandma Louise.

I believe Aunt Dora was the eldest of the siblings (there was also a brother in the mix, who died young). I didn’t see Aunt Dora often. She was married to Charlie, and they had one child, a little girl who died from pertussis when she was only three years old. MAHA! 

Aunt Jenny was next. I saw her infrequently and only when I visited her daughter, Aunt Sylvia, who was not technically my aunt. Sylvia didn’t have children and didn’t seem to like them either. Her husband Emil was much more easygoing. 

My Aunt Lily was fun: a redhead who wore a lot of purple and told bawdy jokes. She may have had a son, Jerry, or Jerry could have been someone else’s son. There are too many people to keep track of!

Speaking of, I think one of the sisters was Aunt Hazel, but I can’t recall anything about her.

I saw Aunt Rosie more than the others, not that I really knew her well. She had two daughters near my dad’s age, and they hung out sometimes. One daughter was a career woman and had no children, and the other, Leah, had two, a son and a daughter. The daughter had one son. 

Finally, when I was in my teens, I was able to get to know my mother’s side of the family a little. She was the eldest of seven ~ two boys and five girls. Aunt Darlene is especially nice and recently sent me a family tree book. I doubt I will ever see her in person again, or any of these peeps, since I am not in regular contact with them, and I dislike traveling.

I have some good memories of visits with my mom's family in Ohio, where aunties (and others) acted happy to see me, and there were loads of animals to play with, especially kittens and horses. Once, I fed a baby goat with a bottle, which was an incredible experience. I wish I knew my aunties all a bit more.