MY AUNT PEGGY

Ye see her not, yet she doth shine in another country. SAMUEL RUTHERFORD [1629]                                                

      I want to write a tribute to my Aunt Peggy, who was a very important person in my formative years.  She died in the 1960s.  Although this story is bittersweet, my next one will reflect her sunny spirit.  She was not a person who could be condensed into one story. 

      My Aunt Peggy (or Peg, as she was also called) died when she was only fifty.  Even though I was already  in college at the time,  it seemed to mark the day I finally started to grow up.  I went from a rather feckless and silly girl to a young woman overnight.   Among other things, it was the first time I ever took a taxi.  That seems like a trivial thing, but it was the result of a decision I made to think of someone else, not just myself. It also taught me a cold lesson about time:  There’s never as much as you think. 

      I was visiting my friend Debbie in Fort Myers over Christmas break.  My mother had been in Miami taking care of my very ill Aunt Peg for months.  While I was in Fort Myers, my mother called to say that she had passed away, and told me to take the bus to Clearwater to be with my grandmother.  Debbie’s mother was so kind and thoughtful to me when I left.  She could see that I was stunned; I felt so alone.  I looked out of the bus window for hours.  It wasn’t a coastal route; it looked like the plains of Florida to me.  We seemed to stop at every little town, sparsely populated then. Everything seemed ugly.   

     When I was a child, Aunt Peg would run interference for me when I would make my mother angry.  When I was about twelve (again, being feckless), I lost my record player somehow and was scared to death to tell my mother.  In those days, portable record players were almost the size of carry-on luggage, so I don’t know how I managed to do this.  For some reason, Aunt Peg was at our house, and I confided in her.  Like magic, I didn’t get in trouble.  She was about eleven years older than my mother, and Mom respected her.  She also gave me tips on how to stop biting my nails, little things like that; we had “girl talk.”  She was affectionate and laughed a lot.  I missed her when she would leave, knowing that I wouldn’t see her again for months.  She and Uncle Richard were teachers in Miami and they only came to Clearwater for a few weeks in the summer, and again for the Christmas holidays. 

     She taught second grade, and Uncle Richard taught high school woodworking.  He was talented, and I have a few pieces of furniture that he made, including a lowboy made of Cuban mahogany.  He cut the wood on Key Largo and brought it back in his sailboat. 

     I do wonder why they chose to teach in Miami rather than locally.  Was the pay better?  Probably, but I also think it was because Uncle Richard was a serious sailor, and made regular trips to Bimini.  I think that back in the day he would also sail to Cuba, obviously before its tragic fall to the communists.   He was very close friends with Clark Mills, a Clearwater boat builder and sailor that everyone remembers.  I have a memory of a wonderful day sailing with them and Aunt Peg on the bay in Clearwater.  During their courtship in the 1940s, sailing together constituted a date.  Her diary mentions going sailing with him at least once a week, and he proposed to her on his boat. 

     I was struck whenever I visited Miami by how much Aunt Peggy’s neighbors loved her. She was very social, a “joiner”, who enjoyed people and put them at ease.  She and Uncle Richard had no children, so it seems that her Miami friends were her “family.”  Her neighbors were distraught when she died, and I remember our family being amazed that several traveled to Clearwater for her funeral. 

     Getting back to my bus ride:  I arrived in Clearwater about 9:00 that night.  I was supposed to call my grandmother so she could pick me up at the bus station in downtown Clearwater.  It was New Year’s Eve and everything seemed deserted.  The Christmas lights were shining all over town, and I remember it being quiet. The New Year was beginning, but I knew that something had ended, and I would never be the same.  I loved Aunt Peggy with all my heart.  She was the delight of everyone in our family, the encourager. I thought she would get better; I see now that my mother wanted to keep the worst from me.  She and Aunt Peg wanted me to have a fun New Year’s Eve with my friend.

      The “adult” idea came into my mind when I saw a taxi parked outside the bus station.  I took it to Grandma’s house, so as not to burden her more.  I didn’t call; I just arrived.  I knew that she would not want me to be “extravagant”, although the ride was just a few blocks north.  Sure enough, she was as surprised as if I had arrived in a chauffeured limousine.  But she looked so tired that I knew I had made the right decision. 

     My grandfather had died in 1961.  Grandma still had her “winter guests”, so she was not technically alone in the house.  But she was alone downstairs, and her roomers wouldn’t want to intrude too much.  My other aunt lived in Clearwater, but she and my uncle couldn’t leave my disabled cousins overnight.  I guess that’s why my mother wanted me to be there instead of returning to Miami, so that someone could be in the house at all times.  Mom would be helping make long-distance arrangements for the funeral in Clearwater, and then she and my father would drive in from Miami, with Uncle Richard following in his own car.  It occurs to me how different things are today.  Taking an airplane was still a luxury in my family, unless for some reason you had to go a great distance.  In the days before interstate highways, the older folks would usually take the train.  Also, they didn’t seem to hurry funerals as much as they do today.  It took people a while to get to places back then.

     I never saw my grandmother cry in front of me, although she had much sorrow in her life.  Maybe it was a combination of keeping emotions rather private and not wanting to be a burden to others.  But that night she talked a lot about Aunt Peg, telling stories the way people who are grieving do.  One has stayed with me:   Peggy was at FSU (still a women’s college back in the 1930s), and called home asking for dues money to join a sorority.  This went over like a lead balloon with Grandma.   It was still the Depression, and on top of that my grandfather was laid up with a broken leg.  When her mother said no, Peggy ended up getting the money from her grandmother.  (It was a loan which she paid back.)  Nonetheless, Grandma’s exact words to me that night were, “I was so provoked!”  I was astonished, because I had never heard her criticize Peggy before.  It was oddly comforting to see that Aunt Peg was not only imperfect, she even had a feckless side.  That made her a little like me, so maybe that meant I was a little like her.          

   I have her diaries she kept before she was married, and they are charming to read.  I want to write a little more next time about her life as a child and as a single young woman during WWII. 

     EPILOGUE:  A friend had given Aunt Peggy a little angel pin from Burdines.  Aunt Peg asked her to purchase another one so that she could give me a special little gift.  She gave it to me from her hospital bed.  I was touched, and thanked her sincerely.  Mom told me to be sure and write Aunt Peg a thank-you note immediately, before I left for Fort Myers.  My mother was always a stickler about prompt thank-you-notes, so I did what I usually did, and procrastinated.  I thought there would always be time for things like that, and I left Miami meaning to write the note later.  Naturally, “later” never came.  For many years, I couldn’t wear the pin because I felt sadness and shame when I would look at it.  Now it gives me pleasure to wear it at Christmas; I think of Aunt Peg as my personal angel.  I’m over seventy now and still kind of silly.   And I still miss you, Aunt Peggy.