07 1 / 2009
Today will be an ode to great-aunts.
Great aunts are special in that they are not closely enough related to be oppressive, but just closely enough to observe the magical workings of genetics. You can observe and appreciate genetic similarities in appearance, personality, even sometimes life course and actions, without the uncomfortable pressure that comes with closer generational relations. My grandfather’s handful of sisters was instrumental in the creation of a large extended family, which provides for me a varied and interesting canvas upon which these genetic strains are splattered.
Joan Didion described her great aunts as the passers-on of culture; even so far as to attribute the postwar cultural vacuum to people whose great-aunts (symbolic of their extended family) lived elsewhere and thus a generation of children were disconnected from porch-sits and horehound drops, like kittens not kept long enough with their mothers. Later of course, this would manifest in a society with no “center” and these children (my parents) would wind up in the Haight creating their own communities based on whim and hallucinogens. Anyway.
I am also particularly into great aunts because more than repositories of culture, they are our closest personal ties with history. My eldest great aunt (pictured above) was born in 1912, and experienced, among other things, the New Deal, the major 20th century wars, the rise of the individual automobile, and Prohibition. I find this - and her - painfully awesome.
Recently my great aunt Ethel passed. I didn’t know her as well as a few of the others, but nonetheless I feel today is a good day to honor the forbears.
