Everyone Needs an Aunt Mary
She’s the kind of aunt we can all aspire to be.
The author with her Aunt Mary. Photo by Ben Osterhaus.
A year ago, I posted on Facebook a short essay about rejection. The essay was specifically having submissions rejected by literary magazines. This, of course, is a very common occurrence for a writer and I was writing about the need to persevere, get back on the horse, and keep writing.
Of the few people who responded to my post, one stood out.
“Who considers you a reject?!” the commenter began. “Probably only those who do not know you,” she continued in a three-paragraph response full of wisdom and cheerleading. “Sent to you with much love and a piece of my heart,” she concluded.
“Thank you so much, Aunt Mary,” I replied, chuckling because I didn’t necessarily think that I was considered a reject so much as my work was not accepted for publication.
Another comment followed our exchange. “Can I please borrow your Aunt Mary?” my friend wrote.
“Everyone needs an Aunt Mary,” I replied.
Yes, everyone needs an Aunt Mary.
In addition to believing that everyone needs an Aunt Mary, I have also wanted to be my Aunt Mary. I remember thinking in my early adult life that someday if I got to be an aunt, I wanted to be like her.
Fun. Interested in the lives of her nieces and nephews. Adventuresome. A little eccentric. She embodied many things I wanted to emulate (except maybe cutting my own hair.)
When I was young, I loved Aunt Mary’s vision for adventure in Washington, DC. She has lived just outside the city for eighty years and she has spent a lot of that time ringing bells from the highest point in the DC, the Gloria in Excelsis Tower of the National Cathedral.
Taking us kids up in the tower was a mark of my childhood. Aunt Mary had keys to secret passageways leading to stone spiral staircases, walks along the sanctuary ceiling, and finally to a rickety elevator that delivered us to the tower.
Ten ropes dangled out of small holes in the ceiling. We were always warned not to touch the seemingly harmless ropes that were attached to thousands of pounds of bells above us, bells that could be in the precarious upright, ready position.
I would often rummage through the bookshelves looking for the 1973 record book to find my name written next to a quarter peal rung in honor of my birth in December 1972.
Aunt Mary exuded enthusiasm on these tours of her prized clubhouse perched high above the city. This is an enthusiasm she still brings with her when we are gathering at a beach house in North Carolina or visiting over Thanksgiving, or listening to her recount her zip-lining trip to mark her 80th birthday.
I think this enthusiasm is in our genes. It is just one of many traits I have inherited from her, like our shared love of being in cold water.
Aunt Mary embodies unpretentious, magnanimous, curiosity about the world around her. When she and Uncle Joe come to visit us in California, they listen to the stories of our lives with rapt attention, asking thoughtful questions and remembering details that we have shared in the past. She is interested, encouraging, and eager to simply be with us without expectation or agenda.
She is generally just happy to be there, where ever there may be. This was the case in 1990 when she, my uncle, and cousin visited us in California. Their trip coincided with dropping me off for my first year of college in Santa Barbara.
An overzealous packer, I had enough stuff to fill two vehicles and they graciously offered to follow us south from the San Francisco Bay area with their rented minivan full of my things.
Now, I am an aunt and I hope I am just a little like my Aunt Mary, a curious and interested aunt who arrives with questions about life. A woman who doesn’t take herself too seriously and can chuckle about her idiosyncrasies. A person who holds conviction, and stands firmly on what she believes but doesn’t let her ideas or ideologies get in the way of relationships.
I want to be like my aunt who immerses herself so completely in things she loves that she doesn’t care if she looks a little silly.
We were in our rented beach house one summer full of aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents. In this three-story sandcastle, the main living area was on the top floor.
One day as I ascended for an afternoon snack, I come across my aunt sitting in an overstuffed chair, one arm draped over her eyes, her other arm sticking straight up in the air. She was holding her phone above her head listening to classical music.
“Um, Mary? What’s going on?” I asked, already chuckling even though I didn’t yet know the answer.
“It’s Yo-Yo Ma,” she replied, briefly taking her arm off her face and looking up at me, with a slight chuckle. No further details were offered before she leaned her head back and again covered her eyes with her arm, the other hand once again aloft with the phone.
And I didn’t need any further explanation.
This was simply just one more way my aunt amazes me as a woman who moves through the world in her incredibly unique and special way, unselfconsciously, unapologetically.
This is why I think everyone should have an Aunt Mary and try to be like her too.