Aunthropology

My aunt, my mother’s little and only sister, a lifelong resident of Seagoville, Texas, just up and moved to New Mexico. She retired. She sold everything. She reunited with the love of her life. She moved. Poof. My Aunt Karen’s very existence has always seemed magical to me. See, my grandparents’ procreation habits were perplexing. They had their first baby in 1935. Shirley was a doll, though I cannot recall ever seeing her photograph. Either there is a well ingrained baby portrait in some longforgotten cedar chest, or else my mind has created a sepia toned image of an adorable cherub with a single forehead curl and rosy cheeks. Shirley died when she was only 14 months old. I visit her grave in Crandall, where most of the Seagoville Pickards were laid to rest, every Thanksgiving, when I take poinsettias to my grandparents. Her name was not mentioned often. I recall being told she succumbed to pneumonia. The origin is suspect, however, as I recall being told it was both due to a flu epidemic but maybe just the night air. The night air was also credited with every bad thing that ever happened to a person, so my money is on Influenza. My grandmother was already expecting her next baby at the funeral of her first, though I am not sure if she knew. My Uncle Jerry was born 8 months later. Then, oddly, they waited almost 9 years before welcoming my mother. I asked my grandmother once, as a scared and pregnant 19-year-old girl who was terrified of all the ills that could befall a woman with child, if she’d ever had a miscarriage. She said no. So, they just waited a long time to have another baby. Mom was the middle child who grew up in Shirley’s shadow. But, rather than being petite sized, like Shirley, mom was made from hearty Pickard stock. By the time she was 13, she was 5’10”, her full height. I digress. They waited, again. Suddenly, 10 years later, in 1955, when Shirley would have been twenty years old, had she lived, my Aunt Karen was born. She is 12 years my senior. She has held so many roles in my life. She was my babysitter. She was my sister figure. She was my best friend. Now, she is my mom, of sorts. I miss her.

Barbara Streisand sings this of memories: scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind/smiles we gave to one another/for the way we were. Marvin Hamlisch wrote The Way We Were, but Babs gave it heart and soul. My memories of my aunt start around 1971. I rode on her handlebars. There were no helmets. We were allowed to tempt fate in this manner, cause 70s. She was 15, soon to be legal driving age. She wore a patchwork denim bucket hat and a cuff bracelet she made at her part-time leatherworking job. “Don’t tell Daddy,” she would plead, wary I would vomit up the details of our outings to my grandfather. She taught me how to scurry to the tippy top of the underpass columns of the bridge over Hall Street. We would draw peace signs with the chalk she carried in the back pocket of her bell bottom jeans. She needn’t have worried about my allegiance to the hippie cause. I was in love with this sisterlike angel of Ashbury with the waist length brown hair. I would never break ranks. Our dynamic shifted radically when she became a mom. Suddenly, there was a husband and a little house in the La Fonda addition. But, there was also an actual baby doll in the form of a tiny cousin. There was even a parrot that only spoke in curse words. I would beg my mother to stay. I wanted to crawl inside of my aunt and stay cocooned there forever. There were times of intense closeness, like when she moved in with my parents one year. I still consider my cousin Jennifer to be my sister in all aspects. Writing these words, it occurs to me that we are an inconceivable but dynamic little trio. I am nestled in between a mother and her daughter, forever begging to absorb their love while trying not to turn over their kayak balance of a mother/daughter relationship.

When girls turn 21, these days, it’s quite a show. There are bar crawls. There are party buses. There are skimpy outfits and pageant like sashes worn across the torso. There are albums worth of pictures taken with infinity duck lips and so many peace signs. When I turned 21, it was different. It was 1988. I had a precious toddler, but not many friends. I was working part-time and going to school part-time, assuming it would be just another night at home. The phone rang in my tiny first house in Kaufman, Texas. My aunt said, “Get dressed. Jennifer is babysitting. We’re going to the West End.” And, we did. I wore my Units black catsuit with BOTH cummerbunds – the turquoise and the hot pink. They could also be worn as tube tops or miniskirts, but I was still unsure of how to dress a postpartum body. I floofed my heavily died curly bob, the one styled like Jennifer Gray in Dirty Dancing. We hit all the clubs. We danced, with each other, all night. I still get chills when I hear that song by Escape Club called Wild, Wild, West. We sang Elton John songs at the piano bar until we were hoarse. We drank champagne. We had buttons made that proudly proclaimed us to be “Double Trouble.”

Time is fickle. You gain perspective while you lose that edge of youth that allows you to be audacious. But, you know a night, a time, is special when it never leaves you. I have an aunt in New Mexico. I think it’s time we pulled out some bicycles. There are surely overpasses lacking peace signs in the southwest.