Mamie.
My Aunt Mamie died on Thanksgiving morning. She was 96. I wasn’t the best niece to her, and unlike my sisters, I rarely visited her in the nursing home. I also failed to make it to her funeral yesterday, so in an effort to do right by her for once in my life, I’m dedicating this post to her memory.
Although Aunt Mamie never had any of her own, she loved babies. Loved them, I say. If you merely showed her a photo of one, she’d immediately begin proclaiming her love to the pictured tyke and wouldn’t stop until she’d said, “God love your little heart,” and “I want to just eat you up,” a dozen or so times. But, oh man, if you showed her a real, live baby? And if you asked her to hold said real, live baby? Step back and watch the true love fest begin. Here’s Aunt Mamie with a four-week-old P.
I don’t know if you can see it in this picture, but at that very moment, Aunt Mamie’s head was on the verge of exploding from sheer joy. Good thing P could understand all that stuff about eating her up, because knowing P as I do, she would have been a little freaked out.
In a way, my sisters and I owe our very existence to Aunt Mamie, as she’s responsible for setting my parents up on their first date. According to lore, Aunt Mamie was afraid my dad would be intimidated by my mother’s advanced degree, so before that first meeting, Aunt Mamie reassured my dad by saying, “Now, Sara’s real educated, but don’t worry about that, because to talk to her, you’d never know it.” I guess that sealed the deal, because my parents were married a few months later.
To Aunt Mamie, baby lover and match-maker extraordinaire: Rest in peace.
