That tells you the blood tie, but there's always more to the story than that. That's only a portion of the story. We all have blood ties that aren't cultivated and grown.
Who was Punkin? She was my aunt? Every person she touched will have their own story. Many will be very good and some won't be. All that means, she was human and those she touched were human.
I know after her death I read some pretty cheap shots taken at her via FaceBook, that social media that shows us sides of some that we don't need or want to see. Did it upset me? Of course it did. Where's the fairness in taking cheap shots at the deceased?
My aunt spent her life teaching. She was always a teacher, in the classroom and outside the classroom. She loved kids.
I suspect at the age of six she started her lifelong vocation of mothering other people's children. Her first children were my dad and uncle, her two motherless brothers. I doubt if she ever considered the fact that she was motherless herself. That wasn't the way her mind worked.
Don't get me wrong, she wasn't one that believed in self sacrifice. She had many joys in life. Her family was one joy. Her students were another joy. Her vacations were another joy. Her friends. The list is endless.
Looking back over the woman I knew, she was many things. She was my aunt. Yes, she was at times like a second mother. That used to irritate Mom. Mom would say, "If God wanted children to have three parents He would have given them three parents." Well, in our case, He did. And in Dad's case, my aunt's case and my uncle's case, He did just that. He gave them three parents to replace the one they lost. They still had their dad, but their mother's parents came to live with the family and help raise the three motherless children.
While my aunt mothered her brothers, she had six years of watching her own mother and many more years of watching the woman who taught her mother how to be a mother.
My aunt didn't stop mothering other people's children when her brothers reached adulthood. She continued to do so, up until the day she died. She mothered her six nephews and two nieces. Then she mothered the great nephews and great nieces when they came along. And to keep life interesting, yes, she mothered her students.
The special knack she had was to know which ones really needed it and would accept her extra attention. There's an endless list of her "students" who have special memories of how my aunt took them under her wing and made them feel special and worthwhile when they were at an all time low.
She knew how to draw lines for herself, too. When she was my teacher, in the classroom she would not cross the line of teacher and become my aunt until the last bell rang. No matter how much I'd beg her as my teacher to be my aunt and intercede on my behalf with my parents, she refused to budge.
Did I take that gracefully? Not at 11, but during what would be the last month of her life, she loved to tell those stories about how I'd try to get her to take my side against my parents. I could laugh at it then and take it gracefully.
She was a walking book of knowledge of the children of Jewell, Kansas. She'd taught almost all of us and she had stories about all of us. If she ever felt malice toward one of her students we never heard it. Many will say the old saying, "If you can't say anything nice about someone, don't say anything." I never heard her say that. I did watch her live that belief though.
There is so much about her that I miss. There's so many stories that she had that I wished I'd asked about. But what I miss more than anything else about her, her laugh.
If my siblings were to write about her, their memories would be different. But I think their writings would show a very similar person. Same with my nieces and nephews. Even the majority of her students would paint a similar picture. Not all of them, but many of them would reflect the same basic nature of the woman I called Aunt Inez or Punkin.
Note: Don't ask me why we called her Punkin. All I know it's what Dad called her. I'm sure it's a name from their childhood.
No comments:
Post a Comment