Memories of
Aunt Lois
I always
thought of Lois as my aunt, or maybe a great-aunt, even though I believe she
was technically my first cousin once removed, by marriage. It seems she was one
of the very first people I met after I was born; my older sister, Kara, had
stayed overnight at Lois and John’s while my mother was in the hospital. On the
way home, we stopped by their house to pick up Kara, at which point my father
must have snapped the photo of Lois holding me on the couch in their living
room, with John and Kara on either side. I’ve seen this photo many times in my
life, and I’ve heard the story many times as well.
I remember so
many good visits to that living room, mostly in the years when we lived in
Boston in the early eighties. At that time, Kara and I often visited Lois and
John. We sometimes stayed overnight; they must have been giving our parents a
break. Among my memories of their house: the elegant floral wallpaper on Lois’
upstairs study, where we slept in the day and trundle beds; looking out the
back windows at the blinking radio tower and trees in the wooded patch behind
their house; stacks of books on her work table, cooking bacon in the mornings
(on one memorable visit, I fainted over the gas stove for some inexplicable
reason and had to recuperate on the couch for some time); trips to a delicious
ice cream store in Newtown Highlands, where we always ordered a chocolate cone
(I wish I could remember its name); and meals out when we met them in parts of
Boston: Greek food, Chinese. Other memories: Lois’ orange tree and blue glass
ornaments in the dining room; leafing through piles and piles of fascinating
books on their coffee table; at one point, rapt listening to a recording of the
Hindenburg disaster (I must have been about ten and knew nothing about this);
in Lois and John’s house, books, stories, laughter, and jokes were always a
given. It was a world, like literature, into which you felt you could
disappear.
Other memories:
the sound of Lois’ cheerful voice over the phone, and John’s too, when we
called them from central Pennsylvania, where we moved in 1984. They always
sounded so genuinely happy to hear from us. Admiring the blue or otherwise
colorful cord on Lois’ reading glasses; I’d never seen anything like that
before. And also, of sending Lois a “novel” I had written on my typewriter in
all caps shortly after that time, a truly bad attempt at historical fiction
based on the teen romances I was reading at that time. Lois returned a
copyedited version with meticulous notes, and I remember talking about the
‘book’ on the phone with her. What a gift to a young writer to have her words
taken seriously, and by a copyeditor for Houghton Mifflin. I felt very, very
special.
The last time I
saw Lois, when my sister and I visited her in Boston on a trip to see our
mother, she was far into Alzheimers and didn’t recognize us. But she was
gracious and warm as always. I distinctly remember how she talked about her
mother and her father, whom she always seemed to love with clear devotion. She kept
repeating, “He was a great big man, and she was a tiny little woman.”
Raising my own son,
now, I can see what a gift it is to have people outside your immediate
(nuclear) family love you from the start. For me, Lois was one of those gifts;
she was a given in my life, and my sister were lucky to have both her and John
in our lives. I always felt loved and special when I was around them. I'm so
grateful for it.
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