Week 2 for 2023’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge is Favorite Photo, which is always a fun theme, though it’s hard to narrow it down to just one photo. I’ve chosen this one of my mother and her siblings from 1955 because it makes me laugh. They look worn out! The picture was probably taken in October of that year because my Aunt Judy is the screaming baby, and she appears to be a newborn.
Look at their little faces! My mom and her eldest brother, Ronnie, look simultaneously exhausted and horrified, while their baby brother and usurped youngest, Steve, cries off to the side. Their facial expressions seem to say, “You brought home another one? Why?” Judy was the fourth baby in five years. My grandparents, good, French-Catholics, had a total of five children between 1950 and 1957 – all single births. Nana Connie would have kept going if complications hadn’t forced her to stop after my Uncle Gary was born. As one of eleven children, she loved being part of a large, loud, chaotic family.
Because she had to stop after “only” five children, and Aunt Judy was the youngest daughter, she held a special place in my grandmother’s heart. As a child, she was a pretty little pixie with creamy skin, strawberry blonde hair, and elfin features. She’s a passionate person; everyone says she inherited her great-grandmother Georgiana’s famous temper. My mom half-jokingly says she and my aunt should have swapped daughters. My temperament is more akin to my aunt’s, as is her son’s! While the family teases her to this day about her temper (which has mellowed considerably over the years) no one gives her enough credit for the flipside of her passionate nature, which is her ability to deeply feel all emotions. While it’s easy and even funny to recall her angry outbursts (we all have our Judy stories!) tales of her at her worst tend to overshadow the kindness, compassion, and consideration she shows towards others, and that’s really sad, when you stop and think about it. So while most of our family members would share funny stories about her temper if asked, “Tell us about Judy,” I’m going to tell you all the good things about my favorite aunt and “other mother.”
She’s loud (to be fair, that describes the majority of my mom’s family) and she’s incredibly funny. She teases people, but never in a mean, malicious way, and she can dish it out as well as take it. She’s aware of her flaws and can laugh at them. Take singing, for example. She’s so bad, her own father once mistook her singing for the howls of the family dog, and yelled for the family to, “Shut the damn dog up!” but she still laughs about that story! We joke that she was the inventor of the selfie and duck lips. My Uncle Steve often left his camera lying around. Who knows how much money the poor, sweet man spent developing film only to find duck-lipped selfies of Judy in half the pictures. Judy has a sense of adventure and spontaneity. When she was younger, she loved riding motorcycles. Though she’s organized and great at planning things, she has no problem taking an impromptu trip somewhere and leaving her accommodations entirely up to chance. I would be scared to death to go anywhere without having a hotel booked, but not her!
Aunt Judy has one of the biggest hearts of anyone I know, and that’s what I love best about her. She’s never afraid to tell you she loves you, but that love comes across best in her actions. She goes out of her way to help others, whether it’s bringing them a meal, snagging some awesome deal for them when she’s out shopping, or putting her time and considerable talents into knitting them something special. She constantly thinks about the people who mean most to her. If you’re sick, she’s at the hospital with you. If you have a baby, you’re spoiled with presents. She and my mom were devoted to their parents. They visited them daily and took them to every doctor’s appointment. Because my aunt lived next door, she often cooked and cleaned for them too. When my mom has medical problems, Judy is always there, taking her to appointments, checking in on her, running errands. As a young, newlywed in her 20s, she took in her 16-year-old brother-in-law without hesitation when his father died. She mothered him those last two years and got him through high school. Few people would willingly take in a teen, let alone make sure he was loved, included, and always had a place to call home. Her love goes beyond people. Her devotion to animals is unrivaled. Animals recognize and seek out kindness, and they instinctively like Judy. Two of the cats she had were strays. My dog, who didn’t like anyone outside our immediate family (including my mom) for the longest time, has always loved Aunt Judy, and gazes at her with total adoration whenever she visits. She takes such good care of her own little dog, spoiling him rotten. She even cooks meals for him.
And what a cook she is! She inherited my grandmother’s skills in the kitchen. Whatever she cooks or bakes is always delicious. She makes the best fish chowder I’ve ever tasted. No restaurant chowder compares, and the whoopie pies she bakes are to die for!
Aunt Judy and Uncle Marty have always been the fun aunt and uncle. When they weren’t doing things solely with the nieces and nephews, like taking us to the movies, hosting sleepovers, or even bringing us on road trips to Canada to visit my grandmother’s family, they were spending time with my mom, brother, and me. Our two families have always done a lot together because my mom and Aunt Judy aren’t only sisters, but best friends, practically joined at the hip. They do everything together. They worked together for over 20 years as administrative assistants at my old high school. After working together all day, they either called or visited each other after work most days. On more than one occasion, they showed up to work wearing the same outfit, or my aunt would buy a shirt for my mom only to learn that she had bought it the day before. They act more like twins than most twins do. Aunt Judy and Uncle Marty are my other parents, and their kids are more like another brother and sister than cousins. If any of you are fortunate enough to have an aunt or uncle in your life that fills that role, you know exactly what I mean. As my bonus parents, they also threw themselves into the role of bonus grandparents to my kids, who are already beyond blessed to be the spoiled-rotten only grandchildren on both sides of the family. When they were small, they spent a week every summer up in Maine with my mom, which meant lots of time with Aunt Judy and Uncle Marty too. The annual highlight of their summer trip was a day at the lake, and a sleepover at Aunt Judy’s where they were served homemade waffles topped with ice cream for breakfast.
Now my kids are newly-minted adults, and my aunt is a grandmother. In a couple of years, her grandchildren will go on trips with her, and be spoiled with waffles and ice cream for breakfast, and run downstairs to her apartment when they smell her famous whoopie pies baking in the oven. The little kids in the photo probably wanted the stork to come and take that wailing baby back where she came from, but they would have missed out on plenty of entertainment and the love and devotion of a sister who knows how to live life one way -- passionately. She loves freely and fully, and we're all enriched by having someone like that in our corner.
This is really a sweet story about your aunt. I hope you share it with her so that she can see how much she means to you!