more on Aunt Susie

I really miss my father's baby sister, my Aunt Susie. Recently she's been on my mind often. Sometimes I think that if my father had married someone different, maybe his parenting style would have been more like his sister's, but then, she never had Daddy's hot temper. He could fly off the handle and go ballistic (sorry for the mixed metaphors) in a heartbeat (more mixing).

Aunt Susie seemed to me to have incredible patience. She usually was in a good mood and loved to laugh. I can hear her now, that deep-chuckle "Oh, my!" I never heard her curse, and certainly, she never beat her children. It seemed like they didn't need to be beaten, the way my parents believed we needed to be beaten. I shouldn't say "beaten"--whipped? spanked? Other than the stripes my mother's keen switches left on our legs, I don't recall ever being bruised. But I do know that we avoided Daddy's huge calloused hands and his belt. Mama used switches, house shoes and flip flops, and hair brushes. She once got really angry with Curtis because while she was whacking him with her hair brush, it broke, and she blamed him. Go figure.

Aunt Susie wasn't perfect, of course. She could be a gossip, and there were times I felt she unfairly compared me to Mary, as well as me to Sheila, with me not coming out on top, either time. But as I've aged, I've realized that she saw me as having more advantages than either Mary or Sheila. She was trying to say to Mary and Sheila that they had positive attributes, too.

She did play favorites with her own children. Her youngest was her pet. Her second-oldest (Garland) was her least favorite. That's why I think Garland's death was so devastating to her. He was the one who looked like her deceased husband David, and they buried him at David's head in the graveyard. Her true love was her second husband Jack (who sadly was an abusive alcoholic). Not only did her oldest son, her youngest son, and her daughter look like Jack, they looked like her, with dark hair, dark eyes, and strong facial features. David and Garland were fair, plump, very English-looking. Garland was actually a sweetheart who took great care of his mother as she aged, until his own death from complications of diabetes. That seemed to shock her, as if she had never contemplated before just how much she cared for him. We didn't press her to go to Garland's grave because it seemed too much for her, and now she's buried there, between the two husbands.

The older Mary gets, the more she looks like her mother. Her parenting style has always been like her mother's: gentle, patient, and kind. Like her mother, she's always had a super softspot for her baby and had more trouble with her second-born child.

Speaking of Mary's baby (Mindy), she contacted me via Facebook to let me know she was going out to the old house to take some pictures of it. I asked her to send one to me, so maybe I'll post it soon.