In the early 1950’s not everyone in our town had a car and if they did, it was the men who drove. My mother was one of the women in our family who had learned to drive and most Monday nights she and I would go shopping in a nearby town with a big retail area. We would get into the 1950 black Mercury, drive down Ridge Avenue and pick up Aunt Anna, my mom’s older sister.
Aunt Anna was about 5’6” with dark naturally wavy hair that came just below her ears, the smooth unlined skin of someone who doesn’t worry, and calm dark Madonna eyes. She was quiet and smiled oftener than she laughed.
When my mom and I would pull up in front of her house and give a beep on the horn there would be a five-minute wait because she was usually late. In the winter time she would arrive in her long dark mouton fur coat, leather gloves, her sensible heels and a trim pocket book. When she got in the car you could smell her perfume. She was a lady.
Aunt Anna was married to Uncle Rocky, a shortish man of few words, a hard worker in the local mill and a backyard gardener of the old school who went to the country to buy fresh manure. In later years my mother showed me a picture of him as a young man. He had a striking, hawk-like profile, full waving hair and piercing eyes under heavy eyebrows. Mom said he was quite a catch in those days because he had a roadster automobile.
Rocky was in his late 20’s when he married Aunt Anna who was 16. When they married they were the same size but my teenage aunt wasn’t done growing yet. A few years later, she topped him by a couple of inches.
Growing up, I remember Aunt Anna’s house as one that was always full of people and children. After dinner, the women would all congregate in the kitchen and drink tea or coffee and the men, weather permitting, would all stand under a tree in the back yard and look over Rocky’s latest crop of tomatoes.
Through all the years, she was always kind, serene, gracious and calm and always deferred to her husband, at least openly. But in her mid 50’s disaster struck. She had a massive stroke and was paralyzed along her left side.
Months of physical therapy enabled her to use a walker, but she was never normal again. She dragged one leg and one arm was pretty useless. But she never smiled anymore. This kind, sweet, calm woman became a Joan Crawford.
I don’t know if all those years of being nice were just social conditioning or if the stroke left her enraged and hopeless but Aunt Anna became very bitter and railed against fate. She rarely left her home because she was embarrassed to have anyone see her. When she and Uncle Rocky would come to my parent’s store, there was a constant irritation she directed to him.
Through it all, Uncle Rocky lived up to his name. He was like a rock that the sea leaves unmoved. Aunt Nana lived several more years after her stroke and all through that time it was Uncle Rocky who cared for her, all day, every day – from her most intimate needs to dressing her and feeding her.
By that time, he was well into his late 70’s himself and was in a lot of pain from back problems. But without complaint, Uncle Rocky waited on her hand and foot until the day she died. He was a gentleman in the truest sense.
I remember going to Aunt Anna’s funeral and seeing her in the coffin. Now that all the pain and sorrow were over, her face was virtually unlined, smooth, like a girl, and the rigid paralysis had finally relaxed, making her again the Madonna of my memory.
After she died, Uncle Rocky spent all of his time in his garden until one day he left to rejoin the wife he had loved so dearly.
“In dreams she grows not older
The lands of Dream among,
Though all the world wax colder,
Though all the song be sung,
In dreams doth he behold her
Still fair and kind and young.”
Andrew Lang
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