Living alone and loving it

After the death of my mother’s parents, my Aunt Dorothy, the eldest child of 7, ruled the roost. Aunt Dorothy was a slender, energetic, bookish woman with an unquenchable curiosity and a surprising “who cares what you think?” attitude about her life choices. (Hmmm…. that sounds vaguely familiar.)

Anyway, I got to thinking about her when I unearthed this marvelous picture of her at Mom and Dad’s 1950 wedding. Look close. Everyone else in the photo is doing the conventional thing…facing the camera. Not Aunt Dorothy. She’s only got proud, loving eyes for her dear little sister the bride. Dorothy followed her heart, even if it rocked the boat. Here’s what I learned from this often-stern, patently geeky maiden aunt about how to navigate living alone without sogginess of spirit.

1. Keep your brain busy. Whenever we visited her Pennsylvania homestead, Dorothy had a project going–and they usually involved learning a new skill–anything from tatting to mastering the latest audio-visual equipment for her career as a middle school librarian. No horizontal surface was without a book–she was an avid and unconventional reader. Which leads me to…

2. Read. Everything. All the time. The morning (and evening) paper, the Bible, Life magazine, Reader’s Digest, a new book about Russian economics or the space race, Our Daily Bread devotional booklets, classic literature, anything travel related–Dorothy read constantly. The only thing she couldn’t abide was what she called “trash”…which included, most notably and to my horror, Nancy Drew books. She said she would NEVER carry those in her library–they weren’t written by a real author, but a syndicate (this was pronounced in tones of darkest scorn).

3. Don’t listen to naysayers–even if it’s your sister. Dorothy followed her voracious thirst for knowledge about other cultures and peoples around the globe by joining teacher tour groups every summer–and *always* to off-beat locales and truly exotic destinations. In fact, she was among the very first to travel to Mainland China when Nixon’s diplomatic corps managed to open it for tourists. She brought back a recipe for “authentic” sweet and sour chicken that I still own, immortalized on an index card in her lovely Palmer cursive. Worldly, wealthy Aunt Priscila often teased her older sister with this deathless line: “Dorothy, can’t you go anywhere NICE, like Paris or London?” This stinger was first launched on Aunt D’s return from hoteling in a yurt (look it up) in the wilds of who-knows-where.

4. Share your interests. When Aunt D returned from these far-flung jaunts, she visited us loaded down with dead-on souvenirs and several well-filled carousels of Kodachrome slides. She loved to share these travelogues with family, even if we didn’t have the sense to appreciate them (my father once caught me trying to duck out of a marathon slide show and said with a chuckle, “Oh, no you don’t! If I have to watch it, so you do!”) My other aunts gave me days-of-the-week underwear for Christmas–Aunt Dorothy invariably presented me with beautifully illustrated children’s books about weather, dogs, birds, and stars.

5. Live your calling. Aunt Dorothy was ever and always a teacher. I’ll never forget the July day when she sat me down on her phlox-shaded front porch and taught me how to properly draw a tree. She drew my attention to the backyard apple tree, then pointed across the road at the forested mountainside that ended practically at her doorstep. “See how most of the tree is the green part, the leafy part? See how you can see very little of the trunk? Make the leafy part about 2/3 of your tree.” I did and I still do.

6. Love the Lord your God. Folks back in the day were more circumspect about sharing their faith–they often considered it a private matter between God and themselves. Aunt Dorothy was a child of her era, but she had a rock-solid faith in Jesus and witnessed to it in various ways. One summer, she sent us kids down the street to a dear fellow maiden lady’s house where an ad hoc Vacation Bible School had been gotten up, just for the sake of we visiting urchins (think flannelgraphs of Noah’s ark and Daniel in the lion’s den). Her fridge was a bulletin board of the many global missionaries she supported. Five-year-old me absorbed the idea that despite living in a tiny coal-mining town, this “old lady” (she was probably about 50!) found a way to happily serve her Lord.

7. Pass your treasures along. After a stroke in her 80’s, Aunt Dorothy was moved to an assisted living facility near her youngest sister, Grace. When clearing out the family home, Dorothy sent me several quilts and a wonderful rag doll who was my exclusive best friend during every visit there. I didn’t know she’d even noticed how much I loved that doll–but she did. She must have known telling me the doll was made by a blind woman would endear her to me. The doll nestles in my bedroom chair to this day and I still marvel at its delicately embroidered facial features and sweet old-fashioned calico dress.

I could go on (and on), but you get the picture. Aunt Dorothy modeled for me the joy of being true to oneself, of loving God and serving others. Someone once asked her (probably outspoken Aunt Priscilla) if she ever wished she’d gotten married and had children. Dorothy arched an eyebrow and scoffed. “I already raised a family,” she reminded the questioner, somewhat sternly, as always. “Now I do what I enjoy…my work and my traveling.”

Amen, Aunt Dorothy. I couldn’t ask for a better blueprint for my own third act, now could I?

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Romans 12:2