Feelings
I have two aunts
By Emmanuelle
(A Note to the Feeling Reader: When I write in the 1st person, it does not follow that I am that person and that what you are reading is about a story in my life. When I write in the 1st person, it is because I believe it is how the story is best written. On the other hand, if I write in the 3rd person, it does not follow that I am NOT that person. When I write in the 3rd person, it is because I believe it is how the story is best written. Thus, to readers who wrote to ask: in “A week to win,” did I run for a seat on May 10? Was I the baby in “No baby talks like this baby”? To both questions, this answer: I did not run for office nor was I that baby; but I may have played a role in either or both stories.)
And so, we proceed to the telling of this one other true story, maybe once mine, maybe once yours. Surely not ours in both counts. But there is no maybe about this: it is true, it did once happen. Or rather, more rightly, these did twice happen.
I had two aunts. The left, and the right. Hold them apart, I was not always sure who was left and who was right. One joined rallies and waxed poetic verses on the daring and the courage of freedom fighters. The other swore on the order of all things, and swooned at the crisp folds of pants, the stiff backs, and the uniformed clips and clops of men and women on the march.
Strangely, in odd and out-of-the-blue moments, the two would reverse places. The raliyesta would sniff down on weakness and the human foibles of nieces and nephews. The istrikta would melt to butter over teary tales; she would then wiggle to make space in her life and adopt a kin or a friend for a short day or the longest year. I had lodged with her more than once too many.
My two aunts were the youngest girls among siblings who came one after the other, cheaper by the dozen. And being the youngest, they became best friends for life.
They had red hair and pale skins. They rode horses and dove deep among corals to school with the fishes. They dreamed to become rich and famous, but they ran out of luck, or they stumbled on more luck than most. They became teachers; one a mathematician, the other a musician. When they felt like running from the sameness of their days, they ran their fingers on piano keys instead. When their music played, our games we stopped. We dropped our balls and dolls; we dropped to our butts or full length on the floor. We listened. The angels must have had too. With the tinkling music, I heard the rustle of unseen wings.
The mathematician lost track of the years, and remained single to the end. The musician had kids who became musicians themselves, and nurses, stewardess, therapist, and artist. My cousins would flee the harshness of this land except for one or two, the singer and the artist in their midst.
Cancer had claimed seven of the twelve siblings since. When the mathematician died, she was not alone. She had the musician and what was left of her dwindling siblings with her. When the musician died last January, she was not alone. She had her children come home. And an aunt just made angel rustled her wings home to her too.
I have had two aunts who loved me as if I were their own. Now, I have none left. When will my world again feel right?
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