apparently she did not say much, as a rule. somewhere i have a great aunt timmy. i’m not sure if she’s alive or dead. too little conversation, too much strain and weight pressed into it, has left the particulars spinning in my head.
aunt timmy. the name evokes images of a shrewd woman, short, lean. sharp-tongued. broad shouldered and handsome in her youth, now bowed with age, but still quick. a woman who maybe stood side by side with her brother ted. quick to scrap. wild.
side to side with her brother, til he fell back. i wonder what she thought of him. from what i gather, it was a quiet disappointment; sharply felt when shortly worded.
her iron arms, spindled to my mother’s hospital bed at the birth of my sister; fifteen or so years as aunt to my mother without a brother to father her. fifteen or so years later still, at another birth; mine. never speaking of ted. but she came. across state lines she came, when he would not cross two suburbs to see his grandchildren born.
my father absent, too. i wonder at the twin lineage of men in my family, two sides braiding down to me. women locked elbow to elbow at the births of my sisters; two girls, three years apart. then many years later, the boy. i wonder what they thought i would become. i wonder what i have. what resolve lies here, what weight this braid can hold. i wonder what aunt timmy would say now.
