![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
My last living aunt just passed away at 96. It's not that we were ever especially close, but it does emphasize that time doesn't stop for anyone. Her husband, my mother's brother, died many years ago. Two of her kids are older than me, one younger, and they are all still around.
I remember her as young and vivacious, and really quite pretty. She was certainly not bashful about telling you what she thought on any subject. Quite generous and kind, she also had blunt streak, that might shock people who hadn't been around her much. She always got up early to make breakfast. She always made toast and buttered it for everyone. When she served grapefruit, she cut around every wedge with a knife before giving it to us. Now, I don't always want butter on my toast. I actually don't like other people buttering my toast, and I can think of no better way of ensuring that you are going to get some of the bitter membrane of the grapefruit in your mouth than by cutting around first with a knife. But since my mother was pretty much insistent on us never looking a gift horse in the mouth, I doubt my aunt ever knew her efforts were somewhat wasted on me.
Certainly not my only memory of her, but one that always raised a smile in my family had to do with Christmas. When I was about five, I think, their family came to celebrate Christmas at our house and everyone had a good time. My aunt, as my mother told it, was an insatiably curious person. One did not keep secrets from my aunt. My mother told me a few years later, that my aunt had opened everyone's Christmas presents even those to each other within my family in the middle of the night and rewrapped them. When I was in college, they invited us for Christmas. With no kids in the the house it was mostly a more gentile affair than when we cousins were kids. My mother slept in the living room, I think, next to the parlor where the presents were under the tree. When she thought my mother was asleep, my aunt snuck into the parlor and carefully opened every one of our presents, then careful wrapped them again. This would just be kind of pathetic, but my father gave me a tool box that Christmas and all the basic tools to go in it. Anything that wasn't part of a set was individually wrapped inside the wrapped box. There were a lot of wrapped things in that box.
Mother said she unwrapped every last piece and it was certainly all wrapped that morning. My father was rather fond of that aunt. He didn't actually have to wrap anything in the tool box, since the box itself was wrapped. I wonder if he wasn't playing a joke on her, knowing she couldn't resist, by putting her through all that work in the middle of the night before Christmas.
I remember her as young and vivacious, and really quite pretty. She was certainly not bashful about telling you what she thought on any subject. Quite generous and kind, she also had blunt streak, that might shock people who hadn't been around her much. She always got up early to make breakfast. She always made toast and buttered it for everyone. When she served grapefruit, she cut around every wedge with a knife before giving it to us. Now, I don't always want butter on my toast. I actually don't like other people buttering my toast, and I can think of no better way of ensuring that you are going to get some of the bitter membrane of the grapefruit in your mouth than by cutting around first with a knife. But since my mother was pretty much insistent on us never looking a gift horse in the mouth, I doubt my aunt ever knew her efforts were somewhat wasted on me.
Certainly not my only memory of her, but one that always raised a smile in my family had to do with Christmas. When I was about five, I think, their family came to celebrate Christmas at our house and everyone had a good time. My aunt, as my mother told it, was an insatiably curious person. One did not keep secrets from my aunt. My mother told me a few years later, that my aunt had opened everyone's Christmas presents even those to each other within my family in the middle of the night and rewrapped them. When I was in college, they invited us for Christmas. With no kids in the the house it was mostly a more gentile affair than when we cousins were kids. My mother slept in the living room, I think, next to the parlor where the presents were under the tree. When she thought my mother was asleep, my aunt snuck into the parlor and carefully opened every one of our presents, then careful wrapped them again. This would just be kind of pathetic, but my father gave me a tool box that Christmas and all the basic tools to go in it. Anything that wasn't part of a set was individually wrapped inside the wrapped box. There were a lot of wrapped things in that box.
Mother said she unwrapped every last piece and it was certainly all wrapped that morning. My father was rather fond of that aunt. He didn't actually have to wrap anything in the tool box, since the box itself was wrapped. I wonder if he wasn't playing a joke on her, knowing she couldn't resist, by putting her through all that work in the middle of the night before Christmas.