This past week in class, I’ve been talking with my students about memoir writing, about the structure and qualities of good memoir writing. We’ve been discussing the importance of taking one event in one’s life, filtering through the memory of it, and then retelling the story with important, vivid, and ample details. This week I gave students an assignment to choose one person in their life that has had some kind of influence on them and then use an event from their lives to illustrate this influence. I explained that the influence doesn’t necessarily have to be good or serious, as in a parent’s loving care. The influence could be destructive, as in a friend’s pressure to drink 52 shots of tequila in one night. I told the students I didn’t care what the influence was as long as they described one person and one event. To illustrate this point, I used an example from my life: my Aunt Lena and her unconventional wisdom.
My Aunt Lena was a first generation Italian-American who came of age during the Depression. She didn’t go to school past the 6th or 8th grade because her family needed money. So, she worked in a laundry, washing and ironing and fixing buttons on shirts. I know she was glad to have a job and she took great pride in her work, but I also think that her work and the difficult times she lived through affected her views of the world. Her parents believed in and instilled in their children the promise of prosperity that America guaranteed its immigrants. Seeing the struggle of wage laborers challenged that promise and made Aunt Lena skeptical of authority.
That skepticism came out in the way she lived her life. She wasn’t too keen on rules and laws that interfered with what she wanted. I’ve blogged about the time she threw her car keys at me when I was 14-years-old and told me to go to the store to buy cigarettes for her. She didn’t care I couldn’t legally drive. That law was a stupid law created by “sons-of-bitches,” a term she frequently used to talk about people she didn’t like or people who posed a threat to her freedoms. She wasn’t going to let a little federal law stop her from smoking her Viceroys.
Nor was she going to let these kinds of laws hinder others. She took every opportunity to tell those in ear shot that they shouldn’t listen to what others tell them to do. They should listen to themselves and do what they want to do. This is great advice for someone, like myself, who is continually being told to cut and color her hair, yet wants to do neither of these things. This advice may not be so great for someone, like myself, who wanted to have a glass of wine with dinner when she was 11-years old. Yet, that is exactly what Aunt Lena told me to do one night when I was at her house having dinner.
“If you want a glass of wine, have one,” she told me as she poured herself one. “There’s nothing wrong with it.” So, I grabbed the bottle after she set it on the table and filled my glass. We toasted each other and once my wine was gone, my cheeks burned red and my body went numb, woozy. She saw the effects of the alcohol and said, “Did you like it?”
“I don’t know. I feel kind of funny.”
“Well, now you know. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. If you like it, drink a glass once in a while. It won’t kill you.”
Not too many adults would allow a 6th grader to drink a whole glass of wine with dinner, but Aunt Lena did. Later, when I was of legal drinking age, I asked her why she let me drink wine when I was younger. She told me she didn’t believe in denying kids (or adults) what they wanted. If kids wanted a handful of M&Ms, give it to them. By denying them the M&M’s, she said, the M&Ms become the forbidden fruit, and nothing in her house is forbidden. If you want something to eat, eat it. If you want something to drink, drink it. If you want to dance, dance. If you want to sing, sing. You have to do what you want to do, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.
What I realize now and wholeheartedly appreciate about her “do what you want to do” philosophy is that she was honest and steadfastly truthful in her living. Where others would say, “No,” Aunt Lena would say, “Those sons-of-bitches don’t know what they’re talking about.”
awesome. miss her so much. she also said never say “don’t do that” she would say as an example ‘” stay on the side walk. “worked every time. love you auntie lena.!!!!!