In case anyone's wondering, my day with the 83-year-old aunt I don't remember went very well.
Posted by
CovingtonCat
Oct 4 '12, 11:46
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She's just like you would expect an old aunt to be. The first thing she said when she met me outside her door was "You look like one of us." She lives in an apartment in the back of her son's garage, and there's large pond behind that with ducks and giant geese.
Her son (who owns his own business) came home for lunch. I remember meeting him when I was in grade school - he'd just gotten his license and had a new car - a red convertible that he couldn't remember whether it was a Charger or a Mustang (he's owned both).
The lunch menu included:
Cranberry bread (homemade)
Macaroni & cheese (homemade with Amish cheese - when I saw that my heart sank because I don't eat cheese but she mentioned that her son didn't eat cheese so then I felt it was OK for me to say I don't, either, which got us into a discussion of whether or not I ate yogurt - I don't - because there are several family members, including my aunt that don't - she thinks there's something genetic that makes some dairy foods taste bad to us - my cousin won't eat butter, either)
Fresh baked rolls (probably not homemade but I'm not sure)
Pot roast with potatoes and carrots (crock pot)
Cole slaw (homemade)
Apple pie (homemade - she wanted me to take some home but I declined)
When my cousin went back to work she pulled out some photo albums. I saw pics of my father (I last saw him when I was 8 and don't remember what he looked like). She told me stories: she bought me my first crib, she didn't like my mother much ("she was a primper"), about a road trip she took with my parents to California (pre-interstates) where I got handed back and forth from the front & back seats (I'm guessing I had to have been crying a lot because she said it was an eventful trip), and how she gave my dad $100 to come out to Colorado because one of my mother's sisters had told him we (my sister & me) were being neglected. That didn't turn out well. He kidnapped my sister, took her to my mother's oldest sister's house where she was locked in the bathroom for 24 hours before the sheriff showed up with a court order to get her back. My aunt didn't know about the kidnapping so that explained (to her mind, anyway) why my father didn't bring the both of us back to Michigan. (He wasn't all that great a guy, even by her standards.)
We talked about some of the genealogic research I'd done some & some info she'd received from another relative. They'd been trying to find out our relationship to a Civil War general so I checked on that when I got home (we're first cousins, she's 3x removed, I'm 4x).
It was a really great first meeting (first for me, anyway). And she gave me buckeyes to take home (homemade, naturally).
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