"A strong, intelligent woman will make you
think it was your idea, but help you
understand it was hers..."
- anonymous
Strong…smart…independent…proactive women…really,
what could be better!
I mean, who is interested in women who
feel, for whatever reason, they should be subservient to a man? No sir, I have had weak knees for those gals
who have little trouble expressing what they are thinking. This has been true from the beginning – well,
my beginning!
I suppose I came by this honestly, for in
my early years, these were the only kinds of women in my life. My mother…aunts…cousins…sisters…girlfriends…nieces
and later my wife…all of them – every single one – cut from a fabric of
thoughtful independence. My heart is
beating a little faster just writing about it! Indeed, as I
consider my journey to date, I am grateful for this trajectory early in my life. It has made my pilgrimage so
much more meaningful.
The
Arnott Matriarch…
One such remarkable woman was my Aunt
Nellie. The most singularly consistent
person I think I have known.
She was what she was from the day I knew she was alive until the day she
died.
The woman left this earth on March 2nd,
2004 at the age of 102. On her 100th
birthday, in addition to a party thrown by her family, she got birthday cards
from the Mayor of her town, the Prime Minister of Ontario, the Prime Minister
of Canada, and the Queen of England!
While these were not ‘personal’ congratulations, their symbolism
thrilled her.
In her lifetime, she saw a lot of changes
from her native city of Toronto, Canada.
Born in 1901, she watched as the 20th Century unfold before her very eyes. Transportation turned from horses to
automobiles…air flight was born…telephones entered in the public realm…radio
became commoditized…satellite communication, space flight, videotape,
computers, compact discs, the internet…and this is only part of the story.
Flora Ellen Arnott taught primary school
for 40 years; retired at the age of 60, and lived another four decades. She was in good health and quite sharp
mentally until the last few years or so of her life. She didn’t drink alcohol, smoke or swear, and
if you spoke ill of anyone in her presence, her eyes would look down until you
were finished, whereby she might say something like, “Well dear, would you like
a cup of tea?” or some other gentle conversation changing comment.
That is not to say she was prudish, in fact
she was anything but. It was simply that
she believed and understood that if you couldn’t say something nice about
someone, then you shouldn’t say anything.
This was one of the most consistent things in her life. She ‘taught’ us that if we were going to have
a conversation with her, it would be positive OR we would be having a
conversation with ourselves!
She never married and was teased, behind
her back, by family for being so, well you know, “…not with it…” Yet with the
exception of my mother – her younger sister by eleven years – she outlived them
all.
A
second life…
After retiring, she spent the remaining years
of her quiet life reading. She was the
most avid booklover I have ever known...a life long habit, and I
suppose when thinking of her, I see her sitting in a chair or lying in bed reading a book. Mother told me, the family would have to
take books away from her, when she was young, to get her to participate in
family activities.
Other wise, her retirement years – if you
could say she ever retired – were spent puttering around the house and garden,
participating in church work and in summers, tinkering with small projects
at her cottage in the Muskoka District of Central Ontario. When I say tinkering, she might, for example, decide she
needed a small side table or something.
A plan would be made, she would get the few tools she might need and then
she would go to work. She was never shy
to ask for help when needed, but if she ‘could’ get it done, she ‘would’ get
it done.
A low intensity magnet...
Curiously, when I brought friends to the
cottage in the summers – and there were many over the decades of my youth – all
of them…every single one adopted her as ‘Aunt Nell’ or more affectionately, ‘Aunt
Nellie.’ When communicating with them in
subsequent years, they would never say, “How is your Aunt Nell doing?” it was
always, “How is Aunt Nell or Nellie?”
She simply had a way making them feel they were a part of her. I never understood how she did it; she simply did.
Aunt Nellie was rich and deep. She lived with her younger unmarried sister
Lillian (my mother’s fraternal twin), until Aunt Lil died some twenty years
before her. Aunt Lil was also a strong
and thoughtful woman…a piano teacher at the Royal Conservatory of Music in
Toronto. There could have been, however,
no two women who were so opposite as these.
Aunt Lil smoked and drank (not to excess), was a pragmatic realist,
openly opinionated and if asked, could be so frank as to make the listener
quite uncomfortable. She spent the last
decade or so of her life in the clutches of chronic disease, quietly cared for
by her polar opposite elder sister Flora Ellen.
When
help was needed…
After leaving military, I was a ship
without a rudder…little clarity, no focus, and a level of personal anxiety the
size of the Titanic, with about as much possibility of success as that doomed
ship on course for its tragic destiny in the North Atlantic.
It was at that point that Aunt Nellie asked
if I would like to come to ‘353 Greer’ and stay with her for awhile (Our family referred to their Toronto homes by the street address). It became a place of refuge, for a young fellow
lacking direction in life.
She asked nothing of me…no conditions…no
rent…nothing – she simply gave her home and her heart.
A heart, by the way that was a difficult thing to penetrate. No that is not exactly right, it was a heart
that was difficult to discern.
She said, “Teddy, I will say this to you only once. You are welcome here as long as you
like. If you have a need, or if you
would like to talk to me about anything, I am available.” That was it.
I lived with her nearly two months, and she never once tried to get me
to talk about anything going on in my head.
While there was little doubt she was my
favorite aunt, she was an odd sort of creature. There was little she wasn’t up for if you
asked her, but she was seldom
proactive. One of her extremely taxing
quirks, at least to me was that she almost never verbally expressed that
she loved me.
Over the years, she and I were alone together
in any number of adventures…driving from the States after a visit back to
Toronto…heading to the cottage just to spend some time together. Every time we saw each other, or chatted on
the telephone I would say, “I love you Aunt Nellie,” She would respond exactly the same way every
single time, “That’s nice dear.”
I said every time, and that is actually not
the truth. When I was in my fifties and
she was, by then diminishing, I said yet once again, “I love you Aunt
Nellie.” She looked at me and said for the
first and only time in my life, “I love you too Teddy.” I was overwhelmed and I wept.
As she drifted off the planet on that March
day in 2004, each of my sisters and I felt we had lost, not just an aunt, but
also a uniquely special woman in our lives.
Were you to ask which of us had the richest experiences with this remarkable
woman, my sisters and I would have said, “I did!” As this woman had mysteriously done with all
my friends that met her (and some reading this piece did know her), she had
done with our family…we had been captured.
A reality and a metaphor...
Each of us has probably had an ‘Aunt
Nellie’ somewhere in our lives - at some point...in some place. These are the people that built and sustained
the foundations of our lives…the unknown warriors quietly investing their time to shape the people we have become and are becoming.
For me, Aunt Nellie was one of those
outstanding strong …smart …independent…proactive women that molded my
life.
Women like that? I like 'em!
- ted
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