Like I have been and now am daily for the best pay of my life, Aunt Linda was a tutor, often, as I do now online with kids across the globe, from her home. She dedicated her teaching time generously to the staff of her church, Trinity Christian Academy. One of her rewards was affordable tuition for my sister and I. I believe the start we got there created a learning ability for which there'd be no turning back. She loved Jeopardy! and read quite a lot. I'm actually quite a lot more like Aunt Linda than Mom :-D
Aunt Linda and Grandma White were taking care of me while Mom was in labor with my sister. Mom called her before the sun rose to let her know the Time Had Come. Aunt Linda's birthday memory that year was feeding me spaghetti, which ended up a bit of everywhere: my hair, my high chair, the floor, all the usual twenty-one month old child's targets. Deb was born about 3:37 that afternoon.
We used to pick vegetables as a family in the garden outside her bedroom. We would pick figs off the tree by her window. I still have a scar from a pebble gained while running along the dirt driveway off the Old Calhoun Road that ran between that garden and her side of the house. I used to pick over the facinating room of hoarded items from the 1960's that showed me memorabilia from her teens, items from her time attending Bob Jones University, and various odds and ends, including the old typewriter either or her Mom used back then. I never could get the old camera to work, but that typewriter became my prize. I created fantasy baseball standings based on characters made with my sister, and wrote my first comic book plots, using up the ribbon several times. I still remember replacing the corrective ribbon. The whole thing closed inside a case.
We used to play board games and card games like Uno with Aunt Linda, both at the dining room table there, and later in the living room of the house where she moved with Grandma and Grandpa in 1991. I still remember peeping at Aunt Linda's answers while playing "Mastermind"- a guessing game using colored pegs. She never let me forget how I leaned over to give her a 'spontaneous hug' and have a look at her hidden pegs! We thought it was so funny at the time.
She embroidered a "Braves" shirt for me. Why I loved #4 so much, I can't say: I liked Biff Pocoroba's name, I guess, even if he was nowhere near so memorable as #3 and #5, Hall of Fame-caliber sluggers Dale Murphy and Bob Horner. She gave me my first 'job': rising at the same hour at which I teach today, the crack of dawn, to walk her dog, Shaggy, a mixed mutt bred from our miniature Daschund, Brandy. He had a crooked back leg and long hair. He was her baby for thirteen years. I earned the money for some much-desired Masters of the Universe figures, about a quarter or so at a time. It was a formative experience.
We used to go camping, all seven of us, for several years. I remember our asthmatic hike down a trail, where I was so convinced we'd gone the wrong way, as it seemed to go on forever. I thought I had the same problem she did. I'm still pretty allergic here in Georgia.
Aunt Linda. You taught us both our first piano lessons in your room. I used to compose my own tunes, which I favored over my lessons. I can't even remember all the first lessons I must've learned from you. Spending the night with her was the greatest adventure my sister and I knew, back then. She would set up cots for us in her room, in a very old house with intimidatingly high ceilings and the kind of massive front porch that has gone out of style.
She'd do due dilligence in getting us through dinner and washing up, and watched tv and played games with us. You have to understand, after I was eight, her house was a place I would casually just walk into, a refuge from the boredom of living out in the country. I killed so many hours borrowing their phone to talk to DAvid Holt. I still tried to break off and actually hang out with them, but I was reaching the age where you really get intensely curious about the outside world. But for many years before then, Aunt Linda was pretty much my best friend. I just know we shared a love of Garfield up til my adolescence. Like Peter Parker, I had an aunt to love, too.
She never married, and helped care for her parents in her somewhat early spinsterhood. I'm nowhere near so old-fashioned, but whether she shared her love of the Atlanta Braves and Baseball Digest, or games, or Lewis Grizzard, she invested so much into me in those long bottom-of-our-shared driveway conversations. I loved her dearly. I don't think she could quite comprehend our pilgrimmage to California- it's exactly the sort of thing she'd never have tried. For years she'd type up the Vent, the reader feedback column in the Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper, for me on her old PC for years. It was full of snarky and sometimes insightful comments. She really had no better idea what to do with a computer besides process words. I always wondered afterwards what might've happened if she'd told her own stories. She dearly loved Eugenia Price, and got some books signed by her.
Sadly she fell out of touch near the end of her life, at 60, in 2009. She had successfully lost a lot of weight, but never met anyone to love. How difficult it was learn her elderly friend down the street had harped on and on with the prediction she'd gain the weight back. I think she had a habit of expecting the same honesty she gave others, too. But that's another story. There are certainly sad passages I carry with me, but indulging in sadness would be too bittersweet a way to eclipse what should be a testament. I want you to know her, too, and if you did, I want you to remember.
She always spent time with both the elderly and the very young. Playing cards with her lonely elderly neighbor came as naturally as tutoring an array of children.
You could find her talk radio playing every single morning. She helped call in our birthdays for the radio, because back then, morning radio was still something families did together. I'm not even that old, as yet, but imagine. It's like I grew up, not only in the country, but in another time altogether.
She put so much into many of my formative traits, I can no more forget her than the parents I so resemble. I have a single class for a change, in a few minutes, so I'll close by saying happy birthday in memory of a sweet, sometimes taciturn, often sarcastic and clever woman who loved us dearly. I taught vocabulary on the piano- an instrument she first taught me. I hope through me she's still passing along a brighter start to a new generation, a passion for serious learning bespeckled with good laughs and creativity.
No comments:
Post a Comment