Women Teach Me about the World, Part 2: In Praise of My Aunts

Part 2 of a series celebrating the women (and their wisdom) in my life for Women's History Month

Childhood summers were punctuated by camping trips to a campground on a small lake I came to know almost as intimately as our backyard. Every trip was the same. We swam, played, ran, paddled, and baked in the sun until a parent called us back to the fire where dinner smoked and sizzled.

Once, while sitting in the sand with a bag of Twizzlers, an aunt told me—then a curious teenager—about sex. We laughed together at her fear of not being able to breathe while kissing. “I have to come up for air every few seconds,” she said.

The conversation felt light and nonchalant, much like these things can be when the adult has no parental obligation over the teenager and can instead offer an open space to talk freely. Somehow we turned toward the measure of good and bad in the bedroom and whether the delineation even existed. She spoke plainly and without shame when she told me which of the church’s rules—both spoken or unspoken—they followed and which they didn’t. I asked her a bouquet of questions, including one on the morality of oral sex. Where sex was already a taboo thing in our conservative Christian circle, here was a topic hardly anyone broached. But my aunt did not shy from it nor show shock at my wondering. Clear, happy face in the sun, she told me about the importance of communication, of measuring each other’s desires, and that little can be deemed wrong when both are aligned.

For my still Christian self, anxious beyond anxious about the rules and the measure between right and wrong that seemed to slosh against my budding desires and curiosities, her calm way on the beach that day was a balm. Her honesty soothed me. So too did her carefree approach to my questions. While the anxiety about rules and sin concerning sex has now faded, my aunt’s words stay with me. When I think back on that day on the beach, I feel heaps of tenderness toward us both; she took me seriously and trusted me as much as I did her.

She is not the only aunt to give me this gift. There was also the aunt who took a job many states away and taught me a small sliver about choosing the self. The aunt who did choose herself and then built a booming business. The aunt who applauded mischief and delighted in play, another who commanded the table at cards and held nothing back when in competition’s way. There was the aunt who rubbed my sore back and reminded me to drink water. Also, the aunt who expanded my palate over and over, one day feeding me microgreens on nutty, seedy bread that I recognized immediately as beyond my palate’s bounds, inspiring exploration nonetheless. There was the aunt who walked me away from guilt and another who taught me that strong bodies aren’t just for boys and men. There was the aunt who fermented everything, the one who always included me, and another who finally mastered bread. They taught me how to love and start over and the wild way grief haunts through it all until all we can do is howl it out.

In the mix of their lessons and offerings came one about the heartbreaking yet necessary humanity of people. My aunts were not perfect and they often left learnings I still struggle to untangle. There is the one who taught me to be ashamed of my period. The one who introduced competition and pitted me against a cousin. There was the aunt who mocked my small elementary self on the front porch and told me I didn’t get any candy because I’m not a favorite and another who spellchecked my private letters and scorned a missed comma in front of everyone. There are the ones who constantly dieted and berated their bodies, the ones always gossipping about each other, and the ones who bemoaned every choice I make. From them, I learned shame and cruelty, lessons if for nothing else than to provide a foil against the rest.

Oh, my aunts, my beloved aunts! The circle of them contains both the familial and the chosen but so many are far from me now. They are more memory than living but their hold remains. It strikes me that, in their presence, I was always circling the drain, asking if I was good. Am I good? Am I? Please, tell me, am I good? And almost every time, with the full measure of their beautiful, faltering humanity, they answered with a resounding yes.