I could tell by the tone of my mother’s voice that something had happened–even over the phone I sensed the gentle sadness–and I knew with a pang of kindred sorrow what it was. Aunt Ruth had died.

Quietly, my mother told me, in her sleep. 104 years old and the last of my grandmother’s sisters. The last of a generation that was mighty upon the earth.

I never thought the Aunts would die. It never seriously occurred to me to fear it—they were too foundational to the proper functioning of the world in general and my life in particular: like Corinthian columns fluted and lovely and made to bear the enormous weight of life with seemingly effortless grace, especially in such a precision of placement as these five sisters had aligned themselves. Even frail little Aunt Ruth, an invalid these forty years, had borne her load manfully, with a core of iron and steel beneath her thin housecoat. Out of all these mighty pillars only she had remained, her faded, almost transparent little body but thinly veiling the light and fire of a still-vibrant mind within.

And now she was gone, too.

The last time I saw her was on a broiling day in late August, nearly as stifling indoors as out in typical Deep South fashion. But it was a warmth that enveloped me like an embrace and distilled with it the essence of summer days long-ago but not lost. We came in through the kitchen and the scent assailed me even more potently than the heat had done, for it was precisely the smell of every other Aunt’s kitchen, a kind-of incense of sausage and cornmeal and Wesson oil, with simmering field peas thrown into the mix. (Grandma’s kitchen always seemed heavier on the sausage-side for some reason, and Aunt Tiny’s, of course, was imbued with the perfume of caramel icing.) Though there were no field peas simmering that day, nor any other indication of domestic activity, there had been enough over the years, I imagine, to steep the very walls with nourishing aromas so that they exuded a collective memorial of the sovereigns in print aprons that had presided there for so long.

Aunt Ruth was lost in a recliner and a pale green afghan and her eyes wandered listlessly while the conversation went on because she could hear so little of it and see nothing at all. But the minute my mother asked for a tale or a reminiscence from the past those eyes came to life. They sparkled; they shone like a girl’s in the first headiness of youth. The little hands worked excitedly and the honey-sweet voice droned on and on about the old days with a lilting that was like music. She told us about the first automobiles that they saw down on the river roads, and how every time a car went past their old farmhouse it would honk for sheer neighborliness and all the children would come running out to see it and wave. How the first time she drove a car herself she was twelve years old and her mother was sick and she had to go and get her daddy. How on her honeymoon in ’29, she and Uncle Bugg drove to Washington D.C. in a red Ford Roadster and went up for a tour in an airplane.

She spun a magic that afternoon in her simple words so fraught with happy remembrance, so that the steamboats on the Altamaha wavered into existence once more and plied their course through the murky waters. And the live oaks that arched over the deep tram road down in the swamp rang with the voices of children long-since departed, swinging across the chasm like so many monkeys. Even the terror of the stunt flier that crashed into the Number One bridge before their very eyes when they were picnicking on the river as a family had a certain conjuring of grotesquerie about it, like something one might encounter within the pages of Flannery O’Connor. Her manner changed with the telling of that tale, her voice dropped low and the bright eyes were hooded with an unforgotten horror. A dark thread amid the brighter ones, throwing color and joy and light and goodness into sharp relief.

Philip fed her just the right sort of questions, shouting politely across the room, and the glances he and I exchanged expressed our mutual enjoyment. How often, after all, does one have the opportunity to spend the afternoon with someone who can boast of over 100 years’ worth of experience in this world? And yet, as we sat in Aunt Ruth’s parlor that day we could have been in the ‘Front Room’ of any of the Aunts. There were the same 1950’s-era portraits of her girls on the wall, the same best furniture, the same aura of gentility and dignity. Each of the sisters’ homes had their own unique stamp, but some indefinable likeness in Aunt Ruth’s parlor invoked all of them at once. From this distance they all seem to have been painted the same pale, limey green, though I know they were not: Aunt Tiny’s was splashed with the color of her bold and vivid oil paintings, and Aunt Babe’s had pale carpet which was stiff on bare legs and religiously unsoiled. Grandma’s had marble-topped tables and a beautiful antique lamp dangling with crystal prisms which was the absolute only thing in her house she ever worried about us breaking. Nevertheless a uniform impression of coolness reigned on those sultry afternoons when we’d sit in state in one or another of them and give an account for ourselves: our grades–first in preeminence–and then our music and perhaps our ballet recitals or tennis matches. (Too many ‘extracurriculars’ were somewhat suspect, the general consensus being summed up in my grandmother’s fear that we might be ‘jack of all trades; master of none’.) And they wanted to know about our friends, which says the world of their genuine interest in our lives. My grandmother knew every one of my friends by name, though she’d never met most of them, and she kept such a detailed mental account of them that whenever we talked she could ask me if Jenifer was still in the marching band or where Ann was going to school or if Amanda and her new husband had bought a house, a fact which, naturally, I took for granted at the time, as we do some of the most precious and genuine things in life, but which strikes me now with a sweet stab of belated gratitude.

(We didn’t always sit in the Front Room, of course. Only on such calls of ceremonial reckoning. On other occasions we’d settle comfortably in rockers and recliners under the ceiling fan in the den, or in aluminum folding chairs in the back yard. But no matter where you ended up, you always came in through the kitchen. No one ever entered an Aunt’s house any other way. And no one ever knocked—a bang of the screened door and a trilling “Yoo-hoo!” was the only announcement a visitor required.)

I was in a state of resolute bliss that August afternoon at Aunt Ruth’s, overwhelmed alike with her memories and my own, and every sense sated with time-erasing impressions. I clung to the moments almost desperately, dreading the time when we had to go, back on the highway, back to the city and the present age and the noise and confusion and hurry. I wanted to be a little girl again with a new piece to perform on Aunt Ruth’s piano—always a bit trying as I was constantly reminded that Aunt Ruth had done the very elegant and appropriate thing of going to Conservatory. (Though I really think as a child that I had some nebulous notion of Aunt Ruth sitting in a starched white dress in a room full of palms and tall windows.) It would have been wildly inappropriate for any of her sisters to have done something so purely ornamental; but for Aunt Ruth it fit her personality like a fine, kid-leather glove.

The whole afternoon was a gift, a window opened mercifully, if briefly, upon my past, granting me glimpses of things I thought vanished forever. Aunt Ruth was enough like my grandmother, in voice, in appearance, even—though so shrunken and tiny—to make me believe for one sweet moment that a beneficent Providence had brought her before me once more. I wanted to throw my arms around Aunt Ruth’s neck that afternoon, and kiss her wrinkled cheek in tearful greeting, for Grandma’s sake, and for her own self-effacement in looking so much like her to me. That’s what I was doing inside as I knelt beside her chair and pressed the beautiful claw-like hands that were once so proficient in Chopin and Schubert in my own young ones.

For even now, so many years after Grandma’s death, it’s only the sight of her tombstone that makes me realize she’s really gone. And Aunt Babe just down the way. Aunt Mary Mac nearby and Aunt Tiny over the hill. And now, at the last, little Aunt Ruth, laid to rest beside her parents. It just cannot be. These were the Immortals; these were the Amazons, these diminutive ladies with their cool fresh front parlors and their very decided opinions on the cut of a roast and the year’s crop of mustard greens and the dispensations of the young lives in their charges–lives loved better than their own.

They are the stuff of legend, and fittingly so. For the world will not see their kind again.

Valentine's Day, 2010

February 12, 2010

The phone calls started the night before and continued into the morning:

“Are you going?”

“Do you think the roads will be safe?”

“What does your husband say? What does your mother say?”

I had been watching the weather forecasts just as intently as everyone else. And I was just as torn up about it. Any other day, was the track along which my anxious thoughts kept running. But not the afternoon of my precious friend’s party, the Valentine Tea that’s become legendary not just for the number of years we’ve enjoyed it in succession, but for the overflowing love of our hostess, perennially delighting us with the art of her kitchen and the warmth of her home. The years are so crammed with memories that they all seem to blend together in a tender mural of glitter and lace, homemade chocolates and heart-shaped scones. Little hands dispensing their tokens of affection and larger ones just as eager to impart theirs. Buoyed and borne upon oceans of hot tea and haunted by the music of feminine conversation: by times intense and passionate, and light-hearted and shrieking with laughter.

And though some of our girls have grown up and wandered far over land and sea, the same memory draws us all, and there’s still a handmade Valentine to be looked for in the mail—and last year even a high-tech Skype call from Sarajevo!

And so it was with a decidedly conflicted heart that I pored over the forecasts and discussed possible outcomes. I mean, snow down here in God’s country is a treat; a holiday! A fleeting miracle of what Brenda so endearingly calls Narnia-magic. If only we could have the magic without the potential danger of those roads winding up to my friend’s mountaintop home!

The Eastern Fence

It must be understood: we Southerners are famously chicken-headed about snow. (And characteristically proud of it, I might add. ) When I look at the pictures of Mid-Westerners’ snowy lanes and New Englanders’ high-piled gardens, I confess it’s not without a shade of completely ignorant envy. And a rather liberal dose of admiration for the indomitable cheerfulness and creative joy with which the privations of winter are met in such regions. I don’t know how it is in other parts of the country, but the appearance of so much as a single flake in the five-day forecast will literally clean out the bread aisles in the grocery stores in an afternoon. And the steady campaign of a storm already dubbed ‘Southern Fury’ headed our way was certainly enough to give us pause.

Experience is a great teacher, however, and wisdom is often its fruit. And as my mother has more of both in stock than any of us younger women put together, we tallied up the smiling but conflicting suggestions of our husbands and we asked her what to do.

“I’m going,” said the indefatigable Claudia. “And if anyone wants to go with me, they’re welcome to.”

The only thing certain about snow in the South is uncertainty, she might have added. No one really knows what’s going to happen till it’s happening. And as there wasn’t a snowflake in sight—not so much as a pellet of sleet—it did seem rather overly cautious to forego the joys that awaited for a prediction of snow that might prove just as mistaken as the half-a-dozen previous this winter.

Offerings of Friendship

All we needed was a leader, it seemed. And we fell in line with alacrity, glad to have someone at the helm and the party beckoning on the horizon once more. Ashley and Edie met at my house along with my intrepid mother. Rachel and Debra and their collective girls set off together. JJ was to meet us along the way.

And just as we got in the car and slammed the doors shut with a giggle at our former indecision, it started to snow. Heavily. We turned around at the end of my driveway in distrust of my half-hearted windshield wipers and piled into my mother’s sedan in even higher spirits than before. Edie transferred, along with her dainty basket of Valentines, a brown paper bag from my car to my mother’s. It seemed that her husband had insisted upon her taking a change of clothes. Just in case…

“It’s too warm to stick,” we assured ourselves. “It’s just a wet, slushy snow.”

“But it’s pretty,” Ashley said.

We were all imagining Wendy’s home, tucked up among its trees like a picture in a storybook with the poetically harmless snow falling outside.

But about a half-an-hour into our trip we started getting nervous. The interstate was growing sluggish, and the roadsides were becoming decidedly white. And the flakes weren’t melting on the road quite as quickly as we’d like to have seen.

“I don’t feel good about this,” my mother said in a voice just as firm with conviction as her earlier assertions had been.

When once the confidence of our captain wavered, the crew wasted no time in following suit. Edie piped up from the back seat, and I, never one to scruple over voicing an opinion, threw in my oar with an emphatic concurrence.

Sebastian in the snow

We pulled off at the next exit and we made my mother put in the hateful call to Wendy. Almost tearful with the disappointment we all shared, she broke the news that we just didn’t think we could go any further—that we were turning back. It broke our hearts to consider all the tender care Wendy had gone to; the knowledge of what we were missing finished the job. And we couldn’t even let ourselves think about the four little baskets of handmade Valentines that had accompanied us on our failed voyage. Husbands started calling and were called to confirm the decision; Rachel and Debra, ahead of us on the road, were forced to abandon the mission shortly thereafter. And poor JJ, in the lead of us all and waiting patiently at the meeting point, had no choice but to navigate onwards alone.

It was Ashley who broke our glum silence.

“We could stop at the French bakery.”

I turned around in my seat and grinned at her, so pretty and stylish in her 1950’s pink velvet hat and soft lavender scarf.

“I’ve got some gorgeous white tea,” I said.

“We could sit by your fire,” my mother added, only taking her eyes from the road long enough to cut her eyes hopefully in my direction.

“I have some little cookies in my basket,” Edie said in her sweet way.

The very thought cheered our way, and we were able to be glad that we had tried and failed instead of accepting defeat without a fight. That’s one thing that I love about my mother—one thing that the day’s little misadventure illustrated in vivid color: she’s not afraid of anything. She faces the mountains in her life with the unflinching eye of faith. But she has wisdom enough to heed the pluck of prudence at her sleeve, and she’s keen enough never to mistake ordinary foolhardiness for courage. A small picture of a great reality. But no less striking for its delicate subject matter and compact frame.

When we got back to my house, Ashley put on the kettle and got out the dishes while I laid the fire, and my mother peeled some blood oranges and Edie sliced some nice cheese to go with our exquisite pastries from the bakery. I turned on the Little Women soundtrack, which always takes us back to Valentines long past, and we feasted and laughed and enjoyed one another and the absolutely breathtaking aspect of the falling snow. It was such a sweet moment of companionship, held in the pristine silence of the materializing wonderland outside. Unlooked-for and perhaps all the sweeter because of it.

Edie's Valentines

But it made me sad for all my delight when the others produced their Valentines—such exquisite little creations can hardly be conveyed, each one a small labor of love—for the baskets still brimmed with the offerings for all those other dear ones whose company we missed that afternoon. Ashley had crafted lovely paper swallows with glittered wings, and Edie had fashioned tiny treat boxes daintily trimmed with ribbons and flowers and sentimental ephemera and filled with the aforesaid cookies. We divided up the lot according to who was going to see whom next—I took Rachel’s and JJ’s, while my mother took Wendy’s and Debra’s—and soon after the party broke up in the interest of everyone getting safely home. But it was even a lovely picture as I stood at my door and watched them down the front walk, laughing and waving, traversing the snow in flimsy heels with white flakes starring their coats and hair and velvet hats.

The Next Morning

A sequel of phone calls the next day confirmed that corresponding little fetes had taken place that afternoon by Debra’s kitchen fire and at Wendy’s, as well, with the troopers that were able to make it, in what my mother is calling the Cell Group Valentine Party. But scattered though we may have been, as effectually as the aforementioned wanderers, there was a great sympathy of friendship binding our hearts that day. And a figurative, if not literal, touching of hands…

Ah, friends, dear friends, as years go on
and heads grow gray, how fast the friends
do go. Touch hands, touch hands,
with those that stay. Strong hands to weak,
old hands to young…Touch hands! Touch hands!

~William Henry Harrison Murray

My Garden