Becoming our mothers

After talking on the phone three times in one day (one call exceeding two hours), my sister reminded me that our mother and her baby sister—our Aunt Ernestine—did the same thing. Back then we would ask ourselves, “What the hell could they possibly be talking about now?” 

Now we know: nothing and everything.

Mary and Ernestine were roughly eight years apart. One lived in Queens. The other lived in The Bronx. They regularly talked two, three, four times a day on the phone.

My sister and I are roughly their ages now and we’re doing the same thing but we also have text, email, Zoom and Facetime to supplement our phone calls especially since COVID-19 has killed any in-person time together.

In the summer of 1983 when I lived in a little house in an even littler town in upstate New York, I invited my mother and aunt to visit.

The plan was fly them both up but Aunt E had never embraced the concept of flying in a metal tube in excess of 400 miles per hour. My mother, on the other hand, would have taken a spaceship had NASA allowed it. Early Saturday morning I picked up my mother at the airport. We went to breakfast then drove the 30+ miles to the house. Aunt E was just getting on her bus for the 9-hour trip which turned into a 12-hour trip. My mother gave Aunt E nothing but grief as she dragged her weary bones off the Greyhound.

What I remember most about that visit, though, was seeing my mother and my aunt not as my mother and my aunt but as sisters. 

That first night they talked endlessly, like they had never talked on the phone that morning, wishing each other safe travels. During their weeklong visit they took long walks along country roads, visited nearby farms, met all of my neighbors, killed their share of snakes, dodged a skunk, and reminisced about growing up in Alabama and coming to New York. They helped me with painting and yard work. They cooked. Man, could these Southern girls cook! And every evening, weather permitting, they sat on a bench in my yard and watched the sun set.

Initially, I had offered them their own bedrooms but they politely said nope. They were going to bunk in the smaller guest room with the twin beds.

Every night I would hear them nyucking and yacking it up in there like they were giddy preteens on a sleepover. All that was missing were Tiger Beat posters on the walls of Nat King Cole and Duke Ellington. The laughter was ridiculously loud to the point where I’d warn, “Don’t make me come in there!”

There would be silence, then they would start up again, more raucous than ever. “I carried you for nine months. Don’t make us come out THERE!” the older would yell back while her mouthy little 65-year-old sister would chime in, “Yeah!” And then they would roar with laughter again. 

This was our routine every night and every night was funnier than the previous night. 

I remember telephoning my sister and giving her blow by blow accounts of the sisters’ hilarious daily doings. I couldn't put my finger on it at first and then I realized they weren't mothers and aunts anymore. They were sisters. It’s like they were, well, human.