Memories of Aunt Anne

My great Aunt Anne, sister to my grandmother recently passed away. I only recently was able to reconnect with her, because I was looking to reconnect with my Godmother, Aunt Dotsy, and they are also sisters.
But since Aunt Anne past some of the memories I have of her have been passing through my mind. Aunt Dotsy and Aunt Anne were living together when I called them, having not spoken to them in about ten years or so. I was not sure they were still alive and was surprised when they were. Maybe this is because my immediate family's life expectancy was 58 for both parents.

My childhood memories are hazy. I remember, thinking I had two Aunt Dotsy's I think this might have something to do with Aunt Anne and Aunt Dotsy looking similar, and then once Aunt Dotsy got a hair cut, which confused me. (So I can see how my children are confused when their mommy puts night make up on. To them she has just become another person.)

So my main memories are actually from when I visited in Highschool. I had over the course of one summer got really into Lion Dance and Kung Fu and then gone to a high school where those sorts of activities were considered foreign. misunderstood, and strange.
And I had this assumption that the older a non Chinese person was the less they would know about it.

But when I tried to explain it to Aunt Anne, she had seen it as a young woman in San Francisco, and had seen it on stilts. (My first real performance was doing Lion Dance on stilts and I haven't seen any one else do it yet except in pictures, and those people are also in a lineage descended from my Sifu.)

Then somehow they asked me to do Kung Fu. At that time I only knew one form. I had only started that Summer, and it was now winter. I had been used to other people seeing my form and not really understanding it. But Aunt Anne said, "Is this supposed to be mimicking a bird?" There are forms that are very obviously a Crane. But Luk Lik, the basic form, is not one of them. So I was surprised that she picked that up. Then she also said when I mentioned that the moves didn't necessarily look strong but-
"But you have to use strength to be able to stop your movements like that." She finished and gestured with her own punches.

She knew exactly where I was coming from, what my issues were, and knew about this culture, my father's culture, that I had just started to really get into and she knew how to express all that to me even though we had not spent a lot of time together.

From that same night I also remembered that she peeled the potatoes faster than I did, doing it a different way, even though I was sure I would peel them faster since all summer I had been peeling them at the Kung Fu school in Horse Stance while the senior students yelled at us to hurry up and to peel it "this way" Not the way Aunt Anne was peeling it. Which actually turned out to be faster even though she was talking and relxing while she peeled them. When my mom told me to peel it like Aunt Anne, Aunt Anne said, "Oh no he's going to peel it his way."

When I spoke to her on the phone, for the last time the very thing she said was, "Well I'm sorry we're not going to get to see each other." And again, she knew exactly where I was coming from, and when I put the kids on the phone and they seemed to be out of control, she actually knew what I should be doing from over the phone better than I did. Jonah wanted to hold the phone himself. "He wants to hold the phone himself." She told me. I handed Jonah the phone. I suppose that some of that comes from Life experience.

"You just take care of your children and spend as much time as you can and love them as much as you can" she said. Comforting ME. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but that was not it. When my mother was going, it was difficult for a long time. And my father went quicker, but there were no last loving words. In fact he squeezed my fingers as hard as he could and asked me if it still hurt to measure how much strength he had. I'm not sure what I will do. But I'm going to try and not do that if possible.

Aunt Dotsy took care of her and was strong, just as she had been for my Grandmother. She had taken care of her too. She had taken care of me and the generations before me apparently, not that I know much about it other than brief mentioning of it from my Uncle Francis.

All that thinking of this and that of the past... well there is good and bad about it. But I suppose (as I mentioned in previous posts) that is the reason I have started bringing my family back to the Catholic Church. It seems round about and strange and perhaps nothing related. But by doing similar things as that generation did, it's like we are closer together. Well, it helps anyway. So I'll probably keep doing it.