Parable of the aunts
How many kinds of aunts are there? On any visit home, I can be sure to run into most of mine, and they could give Bertie Wooster a run for his money. There is a flurry of them, descending in gaggles at different points of the day, sending me into a rictus of despair with a look and a raised eyebrow, reminiscent of past demeanours. It seems their only purpose is to drive a wedge of fear into my thudding heart as they wait for my stammered greetings to cease so they can upbraid me about my underwhelming life.
My maternal aunts tend to be prissy and gubernatorial, their glasses glinting with malevolent intent, lips pressed together in perpetual disapproval. Their memory has never been sharper, announcing my childhood misdeeds to general clucking from an audience of extended family members, and taking the children aside to apprise them of the occasionally poor school grades and consequent punishments. “Have you made anything of your life or are you still a laggard?” the taller one hisses. “His poor wife,” whispers the shorter one theatrically, even though she isn’t much fond of her, “how she must manage with him?”
My paternal aunts can’t seem to stop sharing their load of hypochondriacal problems. They have aching backs and locked knees, diminished eyesight and an encyclopaedia’s worth of diseases. “My ankle hurts since I twisted it running after you,” the stout one tells me, something that occurred four decades ago. “I used to carry you around, the reedy one says, “because your mother never had time for you. No wonder my back hurts,” she adds.
The other kind of aunts, the ones who married my uncles, use secrets as bribes. “Do you still see that girl with braces?” one asks me of a school friend who she once spotted holding my hands. It is a weapon she wields deftly, threatening that a slip might occur should I not be both prompt and discreet about refilling her glass of whiskey at clan get-togethers. She’s a lush, but one can hardly say that to someone with the ability to spill the beans to a suspicious wife. But its the reminiscing kind who are the worst, and they’re mostly cousin aunts who seem to thrive on innuendo. “You used to be so thin,” says one, “what happened to you?” Another one reminds me that she had once loaned me a teensy sum of money. “Did you ever return it?” she asks every time I meet her. “Yes,” I assure her. “The interest too?” she enquires. I tell her I cleared the whole amount, but her suspicious manner suggests she wants more. She’s made more money off that tiny loan than the most astute moneylender.
They’re not all mean. There’s one who jokes a lot too, but I don’t think she’s an aunt at all, just an imposter who inveigled her way into the family a long while ago and refused to go away. Nobody knows her actual relationship with anyone, yet she’s always present, the friendly spirit who everyone turns to for a laugh. I wish more of my aunts were like her. But the scariest of them all is the one who keeps silent and won’t speak at all, keeping her views to herself, smiling thinly when addressed, the resident spook who serves to remind you that the other aunts aren’t all that bad. Even her shadow seems sinister. She’s the one who makes me wonder why a grown man needs an aunt at all.