Jane Austen once wrote to a relative whose first nephew had just been born: “I have always maintained the importance of Aunts as much as possible. Now that you have become an Aunt, you are a person of some consequence.” Jane knew of which she spoke. She herself was a childless auntie, cherished by her nieces and nephews as a marvelous confidante, and remembered always for her “peals of laughter.”
Speaking of writers: From an admittedly biased perspective, I feel the need to mention here that Leo Tolstoy and Truman Capote and all the Bronte sisters were raised by their childless aunts after their real mothers had either died or abandoned them. Tolstoy claimed that his Aunt Toinette was the greatest influence of his life, as she taught him “the moral joy of love.” The historian Edward Gibbon, having been orphaned young, was raised by his beloved and childless Aunt Kitty. John Lennon was raised by his Aunt Mimi, who convinced the boy that he would be an important artist someday. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s loyal Aunt Annabel offered to pay for his college education. Frank Lloyd Wright’s first building was commissioned by his Aunts Jane and Nell-two lovely old maids who ran a boarding school in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Coco Chanel, orphaned as a child, was raised by her Aunt Gabrielle, who taught her how to sew-a useful skill for the girl, I think we would all agree. Virginia Woolf was deeply influenced by her Aunt Caroline, a Quaker spinster who devoted her life to charitable works, who heard voices and spoke to spirits, and who seemed, as Woolf recalled years later, “a kind of modern prophetess.”
Remember that critical moment in literary history when Marcel Proust bites into his famous madeleine cookie, thereby becoming so overwhelmed by nostalgia that he has no choice but to sit down and write the multivolume epic Remembrance of Things Past? That entire tsunami of eloquent nostalgia was set off by the specific memory of Marcel’s beloved Aunt Leonie, who, every Sunday after church, used to share her madeleines with the boy when he was a child.
And have you ever wondered what Peter Pan really looked like? His creator, J. M. Barrie, answered that question for us back in 1911. For Barrie, Peter Pan’s image and his essence and his marvelous spirit of felicity can be found all over the world, hazily reflected “in the faces of many women who have no children.”
That is the Auntie Brigade.
But this decision of mine-the decision to join the Auntie Brigade rather than enlist in the Mommy Corps-does set me off as being quite different from my own mother, and I still felt there was something that needed to be reconciled within that distinction. This is probably why, in the middle of my travels with Felipe, I called my mom one night from Laos, trying to settle some last lingering questions about her own life and her choices and how they related to my life and my choices.
We talked for over an hour. My mom was calm and thoughtful, as ever. She did not seem surprised by my line of questioning-in fact, she responded as though she’d been waiting for me to ask. Waiting, perhaps, for years.
First of all, right off the bat, she was quick to remind me: “I don’t regret anything I ever did for you kids.”
“You don’t regret giving up the work you loved?” I asked.
“I refuse to live in regret,” she said (which did not exactly answer the question, but felt like an honest start). “There was so much to love about those years I spent at home with you girls. I know you kids in a way that your father will never know you. I was there, witnessing your growth. It was a privilege to see you become adults. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss that.”
Also, my mother reminded me that she chose to stay married all those years to the same man because she happens to love my father dearly-which is a good point, and one well taken. It is true that my parents connect not only as friends, but also very much on a bodily level. They are physical in every way together-hiking, biking, and farming side by side. I remember phoning home from college late one winter’s night and catching the two of them out of breath. “What have you guys been up to?” I asked, and my mom, giddy with laughter, announced, “We’ve been sledding!” They had absconded with their ten-year-old neighbor’s toboggan and had been making midnight runs down the icy hill behind our house-my mom lying on my father’s back and shrieking with adrenalized pleasure while he steered the speeding sled through the moonlight. Who still does this in middle age?
My parents have always had a certain sexual chemistry, ever since the day they met. “He looked like Paul Newman,” my mom recalls of their first encounter, and when my sister once asked my father about his favorite memory of my mom, he did not hesitate to reply, “I have always loved the pleasing nature of your mother’s form.” He still loves it. My dad is always grabbing at my mom’s body as she walks by in the kitchen, always checking her out, admiring her legs, lusting after her. She swats him away with fake shock: “John! Stop it!” But you can tell she relishes the attention. I grew up watching that play out, and I think that’s a rare gift-knowing that your parents are physically satisfying to each other. So one big part of my parent’s marriage, as my mother was reminding me, has always been lodged somewhere beyond the rational, hidden someplace deep in the sexual body. And that degree of intimacy is something beyond any explanation, beyond any argument.
Then there is the companionship. My parents have been married for over forty years now. By and large they’ve worked out their deal. They live in a pretty smooth routine, their habits polished by time’s current. They orbit each other in the same basic pattern every day: coffee, dog, breakfast, newspaper, garden, bills, chores, radio, lunch, groceries, dog, dinner, reading, dog, bed… and repeat.
The poet Jack Gilbert (no relation, sadly for me) wrote that marriage is what happens “between the memorable.” He said that we often look back on our marriages years later, perhaps after one spouse has died, and all we can recall are “the vacations, and emergencies”-the high points and low points. The rest of it blends into a blurry sort of daily sameness. But it is that very blurred sameness, the poet argues, that comprises marriage. Marriage is those two thousand indistinguishable conversations, chatted over two thousand indistinguishable breakfasts, where intimacy turns like a slow wheel. How do you measure the worth of becoming that familiar to somebody-so utterly well known and so thoroughly ever-present that you become an almost invisible necessity, like air?
Also, my mom had the grace to remind me that night, when I called her from Laos, that she is far from a saint, and that my dad has had to give up parts of himself, too, in order to stay married to her. As my mother generously admitted, she is not always the easiest person to be married to. My father has had to learn how to tolerate and endure the effects of being managed at every turn by a hyperorganized wife. In this regard, the two of them are horribly ill-matched. My father takes life as it comes; my mother makes life happen. An example: My father was out working in the garage one day when he accidentally stirred a small bird from its nest in the rafters. Confused and afraid, the bird settled on the brim of my dad’s hat. Not wanting to disturb it any further, my father sat for about an hour on the floor of the garage until the bird decided to fly away. This is a very Dad story. Such a thing would never happen to my mother. She is far too busy to allow dazed little birds to rest on her head while there are chores to be done. Mom waits for no bird.