While I say it with trepidation - who wants to pick out a "favorite" relative? - I am honest enough to admit that my Aunt Joan, my mother's only sister, was my favorite Aunt. Why do I say that? Three reasons - Uno, hosting, Good 'N' Plenty.
When you played Uno with Aunt Joan, it was brutal. Once, my brother managed to sneak a wrong card on the discard pile, and the whole game went around a couple times before he admitted it. I thought Aunt Joan was going to blow a gasket, even though she, and the rest of us, were laughing so hard we were crying. Of course, when we played, we always laughed like that.
I spent many eventful and fun days and nights with Aunt Joan, fewer moreso than the summer after Lisa and I were married. We were on our way to Illinois, and made a pitstop for a couple days to visit my mother's family and my relatives in Dayton, and stayed with Aunt Joan. She let us sleep in her bedroom, and the morning we were preparing to leave, we were making her bed, and I am sad to admit that I passed gas so loud it actually rattled the windows. Lisa insists that fart is still rattling around the Universe, and will be picked up by some advanced civilization a couple million years from now. Of course, she heard it in the other room (I think she would have heard it in Cincinnati), and started laughing, and we started laughing, and we left the house laughing. My guess is, however, that she cried when she went in to her bedroom later.
The summer after I was in kindergarten, my mother had gall bladder surgery. My father being helpless in the face of taking care of five children from 16 to age 5, my Aunt and my cousins Claudia and Leah came out to make sure we were fed and watered and that nothing horrible happened to us (you can read my cousin's recollection of one part of that trip here; sad to say, reading it forced me to recall my sisters and her singing "I'm the happiest girl in the whole USA"). In an effort to keep me occupied, Aunt Joan either bought or brought along a board game based on the candy Good 'N' Plenty. Part of playing with Aunt Joan was that she would give me some of the candy while we played. Never a huge fan of licorice, I nevertheless ate those candies eagerly, and forever after would associate the taste with that visit. She also bought me an orange stuffed bear that was almost as big as I was; said bear, named Theodore Edward (what else?) currently resides in my younger daughter's bedroom.
Now, if this seems like slim pickin's as to why my Aunt Joan was my favorite Aunt, let me elaborate a bit. She and my mother were the only girls in a large family full of boys, making their relationship far closer than it might otherwise have been. When she visited, both my mother and father were different. Mom always seem to laugh more, and Dad seemed so relaxed and open (I heard my first ever dirty joke, I must have been about 11 or so, from my father when he and Joan were sharing them back and forth). One summer about fifteen or so years ago - maybe more but no less - Aunt Joan came in early July and ended up staying almost the entire summer. It was an endless summer of enjoyment for my parents, and Joan, too. Once, my mother returned from somewhere, and walked through the house looking for Dad and Joan, finding them sitting together on a side porch. Joan laughed and said, "Virginia, why didn't you look in the bedroom?"
She had a difficult life in many ways, a sad life. In her last years, though, she was reconciled with her son and older daughter (her younger daughter, the cousin who writes about her family experiences, is by far my favorite non-immediate family member) and no one was happier than I when these things happened. Because, you see, beneath the gruff and very loud Johnston exterior lurked a warm, loving heart (the same, I think, is true for all of the members of my mother's family). I loved her because she took care of me and my whole family, provided a little light and light-heartedness to all of us with her visits. I would rather not dwell too long on those parts of her life, because, like Johnstons do, why talk about them?
She fell ill very suddenly last fall, and within a very few weeks was gone. For a variety of reasons, a memorial service was postponed until this coming weekend. Sadly, I cannot make it, but Lisa and the girls will be going in my stead.
I'm fighting tears as I write this, because saying goodbye is always hard, and knowing I cannot do so properly hurts. I love you, Aunt Joan, and will eat a whole box of Good 'N' Plenty on Friday, and think of you, and laugh because I know in my heart that you loved being with us for the same reason - we laughed so hard it would hurt.
Virtual Tin Cup
