Happy Birthday, Aunt Mary

 This is my Aunt Mary.  I cannot remember any part of my life when I have not an Aunt Mary.  I have one American aunt, one German aunt - mine is not a big family, so by proximity alone she wins the aunt sweepstakes.  She joined the family by marriage, and our family was better because of her. She came to concerts, first communion, family dinners and barbecues.  She died in December 2009 and I have been meaning to write something about her for months.

Her home was where we always went for Christmas dinner.  When I was young, she had a silver foil Christmas tree that had a light that sat on the floor and switched from red to yellow to green to blue.  It was very, very cool.  She had a wall removed between her living room and a third bedroom to accommodate an expandable table and an enlarging family, long before remakes and remodels came to cable TV.

Aunt Mary gave me my very first magazine subscription for Christmas in 1971, and in late December of that year, the January 1972 issue arrived with my name on the wrapper.  In February 1972 the cover article was on Maryland.  In May 1974, all of the issues I had received went in a box that went to our new home in Illinois, and in 1981, all of those issue and more went back in boxes to move back to Maryland.

Aunt Mary got us interested in candle-making when I was in sixth grade or so, though I don't remember what the spark that started this project.  She invited my mother, brother and me to her home and we melted blocks of wax, added colors, poured it into milk cartons with or without crushed ice and made candles.  And when a pot of melted wax spilled down my corduroy pants, she barely batted an eye (I didn't like those pants anyway.)  My teacher, Sunday School teacher and choir director (junior choir was not terribly interested in actual singing ability) received candles that Christmas.  After that, I remember going to the craft store at Prince George's Plaza with my best friend and using a hot plate in our basement to make more candles using a hot plate.  No crayon in either of our houses was safe because it was cheaper than buying blocks of colored wax to add color to our candles.

Aunt Mary took me to the theater for several birthdays when I was in junior high.  The last play we went to we picked because of the name:  Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope at Ford's Theater.  Theater was cultural, the location was educational, so it was totally something that Aunt Mary truly believed in.  This was long before electronic media with theater reviews at our fingertip, there may have been a review in the Washington Post  or the Star, but we missed it.  The title just sounded like it should be entertaining.

Despite the catchy title, as plays or musicals go, it was a little dull even though it seems a bit like a church revival meeting.  And in DC, only five to six years after the riots hat followed Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, Aunt Mary and I were the only to Caucasians in the audience, and if I am garden-variety Caucasian, Aunt Mary was practically bio-luminescent with her pale skin and salt-and-pepper hair. 

When I graduated from high school in Illinois in 1978, Aunt Mary was there.  She flew in less than two weeks after the birth of her second grandchild.  She was interested in visiting the Bahai'i Temple in Evanston, and she was willing to trust her life to a 17 year old (me) who had just gotten her driver's license a mere ten days before graduation to drive her from Bolingbrook, up Interstate 55, onto Lake Shore Drive, and up to Evanston.  The pursuit of a new cultural and educational experience was worth the risk of spending time in a car who had spent less than 15 minutes total driving on the interstate and who didn't really like driving on Lake Shore Drive as a passenger much less being behind the wheel.

On the morning after my high school graduation, when I came creeping home at around 6 am, the car driving me home passing my father's Volkswagen Beetle cruising down Galahad Road in the opposite direction and me diving down for cover.  (My mother had locked my bedroom door to cover for me with Dad.)  My mother trusted me and assumed that the adolescent who had given her absolutely no cause for worry was just spending time with friends.

While my mother was taking my brother to school, I sat at the kitchen table with Aunt Mary and briefed her as to where we'd gone after the graduation party. My three friends and I had gotten invited to one of the much cooler graduate's graduation night party, someone had a car and the bright idea of driving 50 miles or so into Chicago to the lakefront.  We wound up near Adler Planetarium, walking around when a boat came close by on Monroe Harbor, we were whooping and hollering for them to congratulate us.  The boat motored over to closer to the group, and the three or so people on board offered a ride, which my friend Barb and two of the guys accepted.  The boat took off across the harbor and then the engine just. . . .died out, putt, putt, putt nothing.  The six or seven of us left behind were a little concerned, and since the boat was just bobbing out there with our imaginations running wild on land, we flagged down a Chicago police car.  Who then radioed the Harbor Patrol.  Who then contacted the Coast Guard.  And in the pre-dawn hours of June 29, the boat was towed back and our friends returned to us.  We all nodded vigorously when the police officer asked if we were over eighteen, and luck stayed with us because he did not ask for identification to prove it.  We stopped at the White Castle for sliders to celebrate our relief.

I think I finally told my mother that story when I was in my thirties.  Aunt Mary kept my secret for more than 15 years. I still remember her listening to me tell of the adventure, which was much funnier in the re-telling than it was in the actual experience.  The look on her face was priceless.

Aunt Mary loved learning, she had traveled to Greece, and when I was in college she was more interested in the Classical Civilization courses I took than I was, and the books I had to buy for that class probably got more use in her hands than mine.  I still get a nervous twitch thinking about whether Middle Minoan I comes before or after Middle Helladic II.

I don't remember when Aunt Mary began quilting, but two of her quilts are in my home.  The first was a complete surprise for my BSN graduation in December 1997; the second was a wall-hanging that was a wedding present.  She was meticulous, a quiet perfectionist and her attention to detail came out in the precision of her cutting and sewing. I am glad that I asked her to sign that quilt so I could embroider her name and have both one of her quilts and an exemplar of her perfect penmanship.

She loved hearing about trips I took for work, and was particularly interested in our adoption trips to China.  She loved my kids, and Micah's journey to language and hearing fascinated her.

There is much more to my Aunt Mary memory quilt than these, but  these are the ones that have stuck with me the longest.  June 25th is her birthday, and since that was the day she came in to the world and her life started its trajectory that would intersect with mine, this is the day I prefer to remember.  Happy Birthday, Aunt Mary.  I hope that you're having travel adventures, eating whatever you like and doing the occasional crossword puzzle to stay sharp.