Aunt Freda

Last month we buried my Aunt Freda. Actually she was my great-aunt, one of many I grew up thinking was my "real" aunt, only to discover that while I have a plethora of great-aunts and step-aunts, I only have one full-blooded, true-by-definition aunt. But I digress.

My grandmother was one of 12 kids. Yikes. They were raised in Paris, Tennessee, and they were poor (with 12 kids, who wouldn't be?). Three boys, nine girls. Grandmama is #10. Aunt Freda was #11.

Her full name was Esta Freda. Did I mention they were very country people? Her sisters called her Esta Freda or Freda. To us kids, she was just Aunt Freda.

When we were growing up, we did everything as a large, extended family. I mean everything. There were 5 sisters and their families who lived in Charleston, so during the summers we all would go to Aunt MaeDell's and swim in their pool. At Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, everyone came over to my grandparents house. We were the sort of family where 2 of us lived next door to our grandparents (those were the houses we spent the most time at as a large group, because we had the most room). We're talking 5 families, 3 generations in each family. LOTS of people. And we were never crowded.

Aunt Freda had a tiny house. But she had a big heart. She raised her granddaughter before that was the thing to do...because it needed to be done. Because of this, I spent a lot of time at her house growing up (her granddaughter, my cousin, is a year older than me).

Aunt Freda was the cool aunt. She watched soap operas and read Harlequin romance novels. We're pretty sure call-waiting was invented for her. She could keep that grapevine buzzing....always to check on her sisters, her sisters' kids, or the grands. And she was funny.

Aunt Freda had these little sayings...like "Whatever smokes your drawers." To this day I don't know what that means, but I know it's good.

And she was quirky. I love quirky, and she had it in spades. When she would make hotdogs, she would dry them off with a paper towel, so your bun wouldn't get soggy (yes, I have adopted this Aunt Freda-ism). And when she washed clothes, she would never, NEVER wash underwear with towels, because then you had nasty stuff touching stuff that needed to be clean when it touched you...which just wouldn't do!

It's funny how small things work their way into your daily life and you don't really realize where it came from until you stop and think it through. In the last couple of weeks, I have chuckled more doing laundry and making hotdogs than ever before. And that's a good thing.

It's just Grandama and Aunt MaeDell now. Rather than blogging about how much I loved them after they're gone, I think I'll tell them before they go.