Happy Birthday, Della Reese
I saw my aunt for the first time in over a year and a half earlier this summer. No one on my mother's side of the family has spoken to one another since my grandmother died. My aunt shirked her responsibility of paying for her half of the funeral, leaving us standing around, dick in hand until auntie convinced her church congregation to fund her debt. After avoiding eye contact for 15 minutes after we initially saw her sitting on a porch swing, my sister and I finally caved and approached her and Uncle Bob with heads high and guts filled with trepidation.
Hiiii, Aunt Kay.
She smiled, revealing a discolored overbite that looked like the second hue in the ROY G BIV color pattern. Her eyebrows were plucked clean save for a few random hairs that must have escaped the tweezers. Dark liner replaced the void brows, arched like she was ready to call the flying monkeys forth. Her hair was coiled tightly in a carrot orange perm. I caught myself staring at her face like I would a plastinated body in a museum exhibit, with the same fascination and mystification at the preservation techniques required to sustain it.
"I'm turning 70 this year, can you believe it?"
Yes, because I believe that hell is full and the dead now walk among us.
"Your Uncle and I will be married 50 years soon!"
50 years of having it on the books, save the multiple 'separations' and that one time she ran off with some guy in the 80s, leaving my Uncle Bob to deal with his friends who kept telling him he married the wrong sister.
That's absolutely fantastic! She looked like she was waiting for further accolades. I was speechless for the most part, still absolutely mystified by the fact that she looked like a Hee-Haw donkey caricature come to life. Not being able to figure out if I should hug her or feed her a sugar cube in congratulations for reaching those milestones, I merely nodded and Oh, wow!'d at the appropriate moments.
"How's your mother? Your brother? What's new with you two?"
Lisa went first. "Working up in Cadillac now, been living up there for a year. Mom's fine. Eric's fine."
Aunt Kay turned to me.
Oh, you know. Still doing school. Putting in a request to get audited for graduation approval soon. Got married. Had a baby.
I just assumed it was standard haven't-seen-you news to her considering she couldn't get those crazy-assed Jack Nicholson stuntdouble eyebrows to convey any emotion beyond "dunk the basketball, Chief".
Lots of things, obviously, can go down in 13 months time. Not all of them are this cute.
