Something uplifting

I have posted this picture before.

It's my Aunt Nan in the cockpit of her plane that she flew, sponsored by Eaglerock Dealers during the summer at Euclid Beach Park in the late twenties and early thirties.  It's a Curtice biplane.  One just like it hangs in the terminal of SeaTac Airport.   For a dollar, two adults would squeeze into the cockpit and she'd fly them up and then out over Lake Erie, and then back down.  For two dollars, she'd loop d'loop the plane.

By the time I was born, the family had crushed her spirits time and time again, and confined her to the role of the dottering old spinster aunt. 

It was better to stay at home, never grow, never reach for the stars because you were sure to fall. Stay home where its safe.

Nan had one one more shot at glory.  She lived in California during the War and debriefed female test pilots for the navy and army air corps as the planes came off the assembly lines and were put through their paces.

"I used to ask them if the plane fought them, if they felt a shimmy in their bottoms and needed a second going over.  Most of the women said the planes felt like they wanted more throttle, wanted to climb higher, bank and dive.  But the jobs were to get them up make sure the controls worked and bring them back down."

"Oh, how I wished I could taken one of them our for a run and see what the plane could really do.  But I had a desk job at the airfield, not a seat in the cockpit."

But then after the war, she was guilted into returning to Ohio and guilted into becoming my grandparents caregiver.

She could be at times the most frustrating woman on earth but she loved all of her nieces and nephews with great passion and verve.

On the night before we buried my father, my very proper aunt, who was also my very frail aunt demonstrated not only a backbone of steel, but a mastery of Yiddish played at the exact correct moment, like a sabre through the heart of Satan.

In the Rabbi's library, there was raucous battle for my father's funeral to be accurate, and after the other side hurled insults about my mother, Nan looked at the Widow and her three family members (who had no right to be there), and simply growled "guy kokken offen yam."

The room fell silent.

Mic drop, time.

In the car going back to drop off Nan at her apartment in the assisted living facility, I asked, "Did I hear what I thought I heard?"

Nan just looked at me and smiled and put her fingers up to her mouth as if to insert a key and turn the lock on her lips.

My middle brother said "Cookie, our aunt told the Black Widow of Beechmont (Country Club) to 'go shit in the ocean.'"

I looked at Nan, and she shrugged her shoulders and said "I should have held my tongue, but she attacked your mother.  That wasn't nice, but never do what I just did.  You see, Cookie, an old woman can get away with stuff like that when someone else hurts her nephews.  But you would have gotten a poke in the eye.  They weren't going take a swing at me."

Well, shit.

How about that.

Stick a fork in and see if I am done.

The woman who no one thought could stand up for herself stood up for her family.

Well played, Nan.

The next day was a blur, but as the funeral professional was getting ready to leave for the cemetery. I was sent inside to find Nan, who had wandered off.

I found her at the side of my father's casket, her hand gliding across the surface, while he purse dangled from her bad arm, the one polio tried to claim.  Lopsided and frail, she just seemed in a trance.  The funeral home employees waiting to wheel the bronze monster to the hearse gave her some space.

"You know, I held him right after her was born,' her face traced her hand as it moved across the lid of the coffin.  "I had just turned 14.  Your Aunt Mim was holding your uncle because he was the older baby by five minutes, and she was the eldest sister.  The doctor was taking care of your grandma and grandpa - no one ever mentioned there were twins.  I held your father.  Oh, he was a handful.  Always fighting to get out of my arms and into the world.  Now this."

I took my aunt's arm and we walked silently towards the hearse, and then to the limo that was taking us to the cemetery.

The next few days were chaotic, exhausting and confusing as we heard of what had been going on behind the scenes with the Widow.  After that, all we focused on was trying to get back part of what was owed us from the widow of the man that fought everyone.

That happened in 1996.  By 1998, Nan was gone.

Nineteen years later I wish she could know how stupefied I was by what came out of her mouth, how brilliantly played it was, and how grateful I was for her but how much I hated that we had grown apart because of that man who was my father.

She may have been a dottering old woman by the time I was old enough to know her, but she still had a bit of spunk left in her when said what she said.

I wish I could have known her when she was young and saw nothing but endless possibilities.  I was glad to know her at all.

Love the people around you because one day you may be the one left behind.  And you'll only have your memories left to cloak you from the cold cruel world.