My Aunt Leonie loved me. She was actually my Great Aunt, my grandmother’s oldest sister, and she was GREAT! It may not seem extraordinary to be loved by an aunt, but when I was growing up, she was the only person in my world whose relationship with me was based simply on love.
Relationships with everyone else were bound tightly with ideas of who I was and was not supposed to be, how I was to act, expectations, rules and unspoken conditions. Like other children who grew up in complicated environments, I thought my family was just the same as everyone’s. I developed ways to cope with my situation without realizing the challenges I was unknowingly enduring.When I was with my Aunt Leonie, however, I could abandon my defenses and relax into who I truly was. I felt safe, nurtured, inspired, excited, and happy. Confusion about myself disappeared. No matter how many other children were around, there was no jealousy or competition. Aunt Leonie was an infinite abundance of purity and kindness and enveloped each of us with bountiful warmth and caring.
From my earliest memories she seemed very old. Her eyes were sapphire blue and sparkled like stars. When she smiled her entire face lit up. She had a large lump from a hernia on her side and she covered it with a flowered dress and sometimes an apron. She had white hair which she wore pinned up on her head. Sometimes when I was at her house she would let it down to wash it. It hung way below her waist and she would lean over the kitchen sink and pour a mysterious blue liquid over it. She would let me watch the entire process without explaining anything. I never felt the need to ask about it.
To this day I don’t exactly understand why my Aunt Leonie was excluded from large family gatherings. I knew intuitively that it was not a subject that should be brought up with anyone. The subject hovered in the family like a stampeding elephant. Once I overheard someone say that my grandmother was angry with her sister because, as children, Leonie was older but smaller and frail and my grandmother had to wear Leonie’s hand-me-down shoes. That explanation did not help my child-sadness or dismay at having my favorite person home alone right across the street as if she didn’t exist.
One noticeable contrast between my house and hers was how people talked with each other. At Aunt Leonie’s house it was like the volume had been turned down low on the radio. Voices were never raised. There didn’t seem to be a need for that. The words that were spoken were always kind, supportive and encouraging. We laughed a lot at her house and talked about our feelings.
I felt I belonged there. Aunt Leonie's house was at the end of a dead-end street one house away from mine. I was allowed to wander back and forth between our houses as early as I can remember. Her enormous yellow house became my refuge, although I didn’t recognize it as such at the time.
One of my earliest memories was running through the sprinkler in her freshly clipped lawn. I was wearing just my shorts, having spontaneously discarded my shirt for a more complete experience. The sun was shining brightly, and big puffy clouds were floating in the enormous blue sky. I was free. Suddenly, I was grabbed up by the back of my shorts and carried firmly under the strong arm of my father like a football all the way home. I was told in no uncertain terms I would never betray my womanhood by not wearing a shirt in public EVER AGAIN. I wanted to run away from home right then and live at Aunt Leonie’s. I thought it would probably be okay, as long as I packed plenty of shirts.
Aunt Leonie’s stepdaughter, Flossy, lived with her. They had a huge porch swing on the South side of their house that seemed to be the place to go for a gentle breeze. There were no railings behind the swing so it would fly out into space and take my breath away. Aunt Leonie, Flossy and I would swing for hours, me in the middle, singing songs that we all knew and even some that we made up.
Aunt Leonie loved to bake. She had a little stool for me to stand on which made me just the right height for helping. She would spread all the ingredients out before me. She taught me how to sift flour, skim off cream, measure lard, and form leftover pie dough into animal shapes that we would sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. I could hardly wait for them to come out of the oven so that we could eat them.
No matter what we were doing at Aunt Leonie’s house, when the cuckoo clock announced the hour, we would race into the sitting room and watch the little German man and woman and their duck come out to take turns ringing the bell. We would squeal with delight and laugh right out loud at the whimsical folly. Every hour we were taken by surprise and thrilled, as if each cuckoo was our first.
Aunt Leonie had an enormous antique oak oval table in her country kitchen. Kids would flock to her house in the cold times of the year to play solitaire. We would play for hours. Instead of playing against each other, we would play in such a way that in order to win, we each had to get rid of all our cards. It was an amazing experience of working together, finding peaceful and encouraging solutions, and having an important place in a group. We worked together and we all won. Putting puzzles together were also a favorite winter activity.
One of Aunt Leonie’s virtues was the ability to be in the moment. We spent many afternoons sitting on wooden crates in her driveway with a small pail of water right by our sides. We would carefully choose little rocks that seemed drab and uninteresting, plunk them into the bucket and gently begin to scrub. When we would pull them out and hold them up, the sparkles that had been hiding inside would burst out, glistening and dancing in the sun’s rays. I was convinced that we were working magic. Those moments were so full and perfect; there was no possibility of being anything but completely absorbed. I didn’t miss a thing.
One of our favorite things to do at Aunt Leonie’s happened every year in the fall. Lots of kids would flock there after school like geese knowing it was time to fly south. When we arrived, a bushel basket of Granny Smith apples sat in the middle of the oval table surrounded by pairing knives. Now, I am sure if our parents knew about this they would have been horrified. We would take an apple and start slowly and carefully peeling the skin into long snakelike ribbons. As we developed our skill, the spirals from one apple would continue on into the next. The challenge was to see how long you could make it before the spiral skin broke. To my knowledge, no one ever got cut.
I am certain I am the person I am today because of my Aunt Leonie. She initiated me into the world of spirit and soul, empowered me to discover myself, inspired my imagination, encouraged even my wildest dreams and allowed me to express my feelings. Aunt Leonie sowed the seeds of kindness, caring, trust, safety, living in a peaceful way, and being all I could be.
Aunt Leonie taught me, most importantly, about love and offered this comfort in so many ways. She showed me with her smile, the delightful sparkle in her eyes, how she put my ponytail in a rubber band, the way she talked with me, and how carefully she listened and listened and listened. She affectionately held me in her loving world, which gave me ground beneath my feet. My Aunt Leonie loved me and I loved my Aunt Leonie! She was my favorite place to be.
