As Brad and I fell asleep last night, we talked about expectations and wishes for Thanksgiving Day.  I actually already had this blog post in my head, but the discussion reminded me that perhaps all of us carry into holidays, expectations and ideas about what a perfect holiday might look like and our perfect day is most likely heavily colored by our past.

As a kid, I remember Aunt Florence when I think about any holiday, but Thanksgiving in particular.  She wasn’t really my aunt, but my great aunt.  There was my grandmother and grandfather on my mother’s side.  My mother and her sister, my aunt Betty, and my grandmother’s 2 sisters, my aunt Miriam and aunt Florence.  My grandmother had another sister Wessie, but she lived in Illinois and I never really got to know her. My dad’s side is another blog post.  Easter is the holiday I have associated with them.

Aunt Florence lived in Youngstown Ohio but came to visit every Thanksgiving and Christmas. She was, in some way, the quintessential old maid school teacher.  Never married, and from my perspective not very attractive, she was the outsider renegade of the family. As I type this, I think one reason I felt an affinity to her was that after my mother was divorced, I felt very much like an outsider.  There was a strong unspoken rule about what everything was to look like and married, norman rockwell families was the correct way to be.  In reality, though there was many odd balls around my family, not just Aunt Florence. But more than the old maid, my aunt Florence was a hero for me.  She was the independent adventurer, who with camera in hand, journeyed off to beautiful places and returned with colorful kodachromes. And since she was part of a camera club, this proved she was not the sole example of an adventurer!

Aside to blog post- I write in such a passive voice…. damn. Oh well, I’ll work on that.

I both feared and envied the camera club.  Possibly because the little rectangular slices of a beautiful life seemed so pleasant and unlike my own world- and they shared these with each other.  They had access to something I wanted. But I was all admiration and love for aunt Florence as she interjected an exoticism into the mundane and usual world around me. There is a chrome of my grandfather and me tearing up bread for the stuffing  that she took one holiday.  I will probably post this before I have a chance to go home and find it, but will add it to the blog later if I can. Her camera was not always out and clicking, but she documented a holiday, none the less.

I frequently have thought about what role she played in my life’s journey.  Even though a camera entered by another avenue, that she had been a photographer had its impact.

We never ate in the dining room at my grandmother’s house except for the big holidays.  Meals were always in the family room, known simply as the back room, on the backside of the house. This added to the specialness of the holiday- as it had its own space outside of the ordinary. Brad said something last night about the ritual of holiday meals, and he was right.  This sacred space of the big meal was a critical part of the ritual.

And aunt Florence was a talker full of stories! Some amazing, some plainly interesting, but all enhancing her exoticism as they were from places away from here.  Even her stories of Youngstown and her students seemed special, but there was a way that Hawaii or Arizona or somewhere, would always enter the conversation.

I began this post assuring myself it wouldn’t be one of those ‘I’m so grateful for…’ posts, but now as I write, the degree to which I have loved my family members, and the depth of missing them is huge.  No matter how bad things ever were I had all of that, and that is so much to be thankful for!

So, the not as good stuff.  Somewhere within every dinner there was that moment. The conversation would be loud and chaotic around the table. The noise would crescendo and tears begin, and my aunt Florence, sitting, across from me, but more towards a corner of the table would be crying that no one ever listened to her. Uncomfortable drama.Â

After she retired, aunt Florence moved to Pittsburgh and lived with my grandmother.  I don’t think I would have made it through my first year of teaching without her support.  While I never remember he taking photos after she moved, she would always look at mine and critique them.  Never critical in a nasty way, but she told you what she thought.  So often her comment was that I had too much going on in the picture- that I needed to focus and minimize noise in the background.