My Second Mother

It’s been a week since my Aunt Wilda died Easter morning.  She is the last of the four women who had a hand in rearing me:  Jackie Williams, my mother’s landlady, my mother Constance Dyson, my step-mother Emily Burroughs and finally my Aunt Wilda, who was my second mother and influenced me most in my formative years.  My Uncle JT, her husband, used to say we were like two billy goats locking horns.  Though our love ran deep we often had differences of opinion and we were both married to our viewpoints. 

So many memories—hot, humid summer days and nights in Houston when I would sneak into the hallway from my sweaty sheets and turn the attic fan timer for another blessed ten minutes.  I know my aunt knew I was doing this.  She seldom missed anything.  But she never said a word.  Sitting in the tiny kitchen with my cousin and aunt and uncle enjoying a dinner of southern cooking, Japanese Fruit Cake at Christmas, corn bread dressing and pecan pie at Thanksgiving, homemade ice cream on the 4^th of July, trips to a nearby river for a picnic and a cooling dip, outings to Galveston where sunburn was inevitable.  Hamburgers and fries on Saturdays from the Whataburger,  sojourns to the drive-theater Saturday evening,thumbing through the Sears Roebuck Catalogue with a red pencil checking those items we liked. 

And bless her heart she taught me to sew.  Her patience was bottomless in this endeavor.  Indeed the joke in our family has been if I get out the sewing machine, we put a divorce lawyer on retainer just in case I lose it.  I am not a happy seamstress.  But my auntie’s encouragement leavened with a just-get-on-with-it stance ensured that I could actually make clothes. I also learned to cook from her, but just as my uncle surpassed my aunt in the kitchen, my own husband has far outstripped my culinary skills.

 In the 75 years I knew my aunt I only saw (actually heard) her cry once.  It was during the Vietnam War and she had not heard from Steve-- her son--for some time and was scared witless.  She called me thinking that my husband, who was in the Marine Corps at the time, might be able to find out if her son was OK.  Her voice broke across the telephone lines from Houston to Boston.  Me, I’m a crier and even as I type this I weep.  It had only been a few months since I was on the opposite side of such a conversation.

 My aunt was a practical person.  She always sought the most efficient path to accomplish any task.   Once that path was found, it was the best way so why would one entertain another way.  Horns Locked—not because I had a better way.  No, I rebelled against the notion that there was only one way, that I could not take a left turn and explore the unknown.   To this day I will leave myself open to a swift change of path or focus.  Admittedly Auntie dear, this does not always work out as well as I hope.  

She was not a Pollyanna. Her motto might have been, Straighten Up and Fly Right.  I often imagine her knocking the collective heads of humanity together,  saying to one and all in that no nonsense, brook no opposition voice, “Get over it!  Move on!  Just do it!”  She had no patience for fools, for those easily duped by politicians, true believers, advertisements, and scammers.

By 2008 she had lost her husband and all her siblings.  The last of seven, Aunt Wilda lived with Alzheimer’s  from this period to her death a week ago.  Her son my cousin cared for her for twelve years.   She had watched two other sisters develop and die with complications from Alzheimer’s and dreaded the thought of developing it.  But it sneaked up on her, robbing her of memory slowly but steadily until she did not even understand that she had the disease she so dreaded.

She will always be with me.  Often when I’m angry and narrowly focused with tension throughout my body I speak with her voice, the jaw tightening, the consonants sharpening as they embrace sliding vowels.  Sometimes I can feel her take over my body.  My posture, a gesture, my walk become hers and a feeling of aching nostalgia rises.  Her inhabiting of me is always from a period in her life when she bestrode the world as a member of The Greatest Generation, when the future was limitless, when her mind was razor sharp, when her laughter brightened my world.   She was always there for me when my mother could not be. She and my Uncle JT gave me a safe, loving home and a cousin who is more brother than cousin. I will always be grateful.

Rest in Peace Aunt Wilda

Wilda Dyson Harper  (Wilda pronounced as in the word wild)

Born January 1, 1927  Montgomery Louisiana

Died April 12, 2020 in Humble Texas

Circa 1946 Nineteen Years Old